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Shelburne  Essays 


By 

Paul  Elmer  More 


Fourth  Series 


"  Ocra.  yap  wpoeypdcfirj,  €ts  t^v  ■^/xcrepav  StSatr/caXtav 
iypacf>r],  Lva  8ia  t^s  vtto/aov^s  koI  8ia  ttjs  TrapaKXT^creo)? 
Toiv  ypa<f)wv  rrjv  iXwiSa  e^wfitv- 


G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons 

New   York  and    London 

^be  finickerbocl^ec  ipress 

1907 


Copyright,  1906 


PAUL  ELMER  MORE 

Published,  December,  1906 
Reprinted,  January,  1907 


Zbe  ■Rnicherbecher  |>re«6,  «€»  IPotfc 


ADVERTISEMENT 

The  first  of  these  essays  was  written  for  the  Inter- 
national Quarterly.  Those  on  Franklin  and  Paradise 
Lost  appeared  in  the  Independent.  All  the  others  are 
taken  from  the  literary  pages  of  the  New  York  Evening 
Post.  In  several  cases  a  good  deal  of  new  matter  has  been 
added  for  the  present  publication. 


CONTENTS 

PAOB 

Thk  Vicar  of  Morwenstow        .        .        .        .  i 

Fanny  Burney 35 

A  Note  ON  "  Daddy"  Crisp 6i 

George  Herbert 66 

John  Keats 99 

Benjamin  Franklin 129 

Charles  Lamb  again 156 

Walt  Whitman 180 

William  Blake 212 

The  Theme  of  "Paradise  Lost"        .        .        .239 

The  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole     .       .       .  254 


SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

FOURTH  SERIES 


THE  VICAR  OF  MORWENSTOW 

Some  thirty  years  ago,  in  1875  to  be  exact, 
that  unstable  compound,  the  English  Church, 
was  shocked  by  the  news  that  a  Cornish  cler- 
gyman, dying  away  from  home,  had  received 
the  sacraments  from  the  hands  of  a  Roman 
priest.  Over  the  head  of  his  young  wife,  who 
had  summoned  the  ministrant  to  his  bedside, 
there  was  poured  a  bitter  stream  of  controversy, 
as  was  the  wont  of  the  Establishment  in  those 
days ;  and  the  storm  was  not  allayed  by  the  pub- 
lication a  few  months  later  of  a  somewhat  irre- 
sponsible biography  of  the  apostate  by  the  Rev.  S. 
Baring-Gould.  It  was  then  seen  that  this  death- 
bed conversion  was  only  the  last  act  of  a  life 
crammed  mth  eccentricities,  and  from  that  day  to 
this  the  Vicar  of  Morwenstow  has  enjoyed  a  kind 
of  pre-eminence  in  curiosity.  At  last  his  son-in 
law,  Mr.  C.  E.  Byles,  has  collected  his  scattered 
prose  and  verse  in  two  attractive  volumes,  and 
has  added  to  these  a  full  aud  accurate  record  of 


2  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

his  life.'  There  is  no  doubt  as  to  the  value  of  the 
result.  Hawker  cannot  by  any  stretch  of  cour- 
tesy be  called  quite  a  great  writer,  but  I  do  not 
hesitate  to  say  that  the  works  and  biography  to- 
gether bring  us  acquainted  with  one  of  the  most 
original  and  most  interesting  personalities  of  the 
past  century.  He  is  likely  to  be  remembered 
longer  than  some  who  have  achieved  more  as 
artists. 

And  if  he  cannot  be  ranked  among  the  great, 
at  least  his  writings,  long  before  Mr.  Baring- 
Gould  made  him  a  subject  of  romance,  had  at- 
tained an  anomalous  celebrity.  One  of  his  curi- 
ous methods  of  reaching  the  public  was  to  print 
off  a  poem  in  the  form  of  leaflets,  which  he  then 
inclosed,  like  advertisements,  in  business  and 
friendly  letters.  In  this  way  and  through  other 
obscure  channels  of  publication,  some  of  his 
poems  attained  a  kind  of  life  apart  from  their 
author.  They  even  received  the  dubious  praise 
of  being  imitated  and  stolen,  and  his  best  work 
had  a  humourous  trick  of  gaining  currency  as 
anonymous  and  ancient  folklore.     His  Sir  Beville 


'  Footprints  of  Former  Men  in  Far  Cornwall.  By 
R.  S.  Hawker.     New  York:  John  Lane,  1903. 

Cornish  Ballads  and  Other  Poems.  By  R.  S.  Hawker. 
John  Lane,  1904. 

The  Life  and  Letters  of  R.  S.  Hawker  (Sometime 
Vicar  of  Morwenstow).  By  his  Son-in-law,  C.  E.  Byles. 
John  Lan-;,  1905. 


THE  VICAR  OF  MORWENSTOW  3 

was  included  iu  Major  Egerton  Leigh's  Ballads 
and  Legends  of  Cheshire,  published  in  1867,  where 
it  was  described  as  "A  Royalist  song  found 
amongst  the  family  papers  in  an  old  oak  chest,  at 
Erdeswick  Hall,  one  of  the  seats  of  the  Minshull 
family."  Nor  was  this  a  solitary  instance.  Most 
notable  of  all  was  the  fortune  of  his  Song  of  the 
Western  Men,  which,  as  the  ballad  that  has  raised 
the  loudest  discussion,  may  here  be  quoted  entire: 

A  good  sword  and  a  trusty  hand ! 

A  merry  heart  and  true  ! 
King  James's  men  shall  understand 

What  Cornish  lads  can  do  ! 

And  have  they  fixed  the  where  and  when  ? 

And  shall  Trclawny  die  ? 
Here  ^s  twenty  thousand  Cornish  men 

Will  knozu  the  reason  why  ! 

Out  spake  their  Captain  brave  and  bold : 

A  merry  wight  was  he  :  — 
"  If  London  Tower  were  Michael's  hold, 

We  'd  set  Trelawny  free  ! 

"  We  '11  cross  the  Tamar,  land  to  land  : 

The  Severn  is  no  stay  : 
With  '  one  and  all,'  and  hand  in  hand ; 

And  who  shall  bid  us  nay  ? 

"  And  when  we  come  to  London  Wall, 

A  pleasant  sight  to  view, 
Come  forth  !  come  forth  !  ye  cowards  all : 

Here  's  men  as  good  as  you." 


4  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

Trelawny  he 's  in  keep  and  hold  : 

Trelawny  he  may  die  : 
But  here  '5  twenty  thousand  Cornish  bold 
Will  know  the  reason  why  ! 

The  stanzas    were  first   published    by   Hawker 
anonymously  in  a  provincial  newspaper,  when  he 
was  twenty-three.     With   the  exception   of  the 
italicised  refrain,   which  is  traditional  and  was 
supposed   by  Hawker  to  allude  to  Sir  Jonathan 
Trelawny,  one  of  the  seven  Bishops  imprisoned  by 
James  II.,  the  poem  is  entirely  original.     Yet  so 
well  had  it  caught  the  popular  vein  that  it  soon 
passed  for  an  ancient  ballad.     Mr.  Davies  Gilbert, 
President  of  the  Royal  Society  of  London,  had  it 
printed  as  such  on  a  broadside  ;  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
in  a  note  to  his  own  poems,  wrote  of  it  as  "a 
curious  and  spirited  specimen"   of  the  popular 
ballad;  and  Macaulay,  in  his  History  of  England^ 
used  it  as  an  indication  of  the  feeling  in  Cornwall 
during  the  trial  of  the  bishops.     It  has  since  been 
discovered  that  Hawker  himself  was  partly  mis- 
taken, and  that  the  refrain  alludes  to  an  earlier 
Trelawny  than  the  persecuted  Churchman;  but 
that  is  small  matter.     No  wonder  that  the  author 
contemplated  his  ravished  honours  with  some  jeal- 
ousy.    "All  these  years,"  he  exclaimed  bitterly, 
"the  Song  has  been  bought  and  sold,  set  to  music 
and  applauded,  while  I  have  lived  on  among  these 
far-away    rocks   unprofited,   unpraised,   and   un- 
known.     This  is  an  epitome  of  my  whole  life. 
Others  have  drawn  profit  from  my  brain,  while 


THE  VICAR  OF  MORWENSTOW  5 

I  have  been  coollj^  relinquished  to  obscurity  and 
uurequital  and  neglect." 

And  as  with  his  works,  so  with  the  man.  For 
years  before  his  death  people  who  had  scarcely 
heard  the  name  of  Robert  Stephen  Hawker  knew 
vaguely  of  the  strange  Vicar  of  Morwenstow,  and 
associated  his  oddities  with  the  wonders  of  the 
West  Country.  Visitors  to  Devonshire  and  the 
Duchy  of  Cornwall  turned  aside,  as  did  Tennyson 
on  a  memorable  occasion,  from  the  haunts  of 
King  Arthur  and  the  relics  of  a  thousand  super- 
stitions to  break  bread  with  the  lonely  parson 
whose  life  was  absorbed  in  the  spirit  of  the  land. 
And  what  a  land!  Beauty  and  terror  there  divide 
the  scene  between  them,  and  the  recollections  of 
saint  and  human  fiend  jostle  each  other  for  pos- 
session. There  is  Kynance  Cove,  on  the  Lizard, 
which  Swinburne,  in  his  exaggerated  way,  thinks 
the  most  incomparably  lovely  spot  in  the  world. 
Here  one  may  follow  up  some  river  valley  of 
many-changing  charms  till  suddenly  he  comes 
out  on  the  wide,  rocky  moors,  whose  vastness 
seems  more  lonely  than  the  sea,  and  whose  mj^s- 
teries  have  wrought  an  indescribable  fear  in  the 
minds  of  men.  Barely  a  score  of  miles  west  of 
Morwenstow,  on  the  north  coast,  rises  the  stern 
headland  of  Tintagel  (or  Dundagel;  it  is  spelt  in 
many  ways),  which  fame  has  made  the  birthplace 
of  Arthur,  and  hallowed  and  saddened  with  the 
loves  of  Tristram  and  Iseult  and  King  Mark. 
It  may  almost  be  called  the  Bethlehem  of  Ro- 


6  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

mance.  One  approaches  it  to-day  through  a  dark 
ravine  that  drops  precipitously  to  the  sea  ;  and 
standing  on  the  shore,  one  looks  up  and  sees  that 
the  great  clifif  on  the  left  has  been  rent  asunder, 
how  long  ago  cannot  be  told,  leaving  a  chasm 
between  the  two  ruined  castles,  in  one  of  which 
Ygerne  shut  herself  up  against  the  guilty  passion 
of  Uther  Pendragon,  but  in  vain.  Through  that 
riven  gate  the  wet  wind  rises  and  the  sound  of 
waves  that  are  said  never  to  be  still  ;  and  one 
thinks  of  Hawker's  noble  image  : 

There  stood  Dundagel,  throned  :  and  the  great  sea 
Lay,  a  strong  vassal  at  his  master's  gate, 
And,  like  a  drunken  giant,  sobb'd  in  sleep ! 

Or,  if  the  mood  of  the  waters  is  more  boisterous, 
it  may  be  that  Swinburne's  swinging  lines  break 
on  the  memory,  as  he  describes  the  carrying 
of  Iseult,  with  the  fire  of  the  magic  potion  already 
in  her  veins,  up  the  steep  path,  while  King  Mark 
and  his  knights  cluster  before  the  walls  and  look 
down  on  the  climbing  procession: 

So  with  loud  joy  and  storm  of  festival 

They  brought  the  bride  in  up  the  towery  way 

That  rose  against  the  rising  front  of  day. 

Stair  based  on  stair,  between  the  rocks  unhewn. 

To  those  strange  halls  wherethrough  the  tidal  tune 

Rang  loud  or  lower  from  soft  or  strengthening  sea, 

Tower  shouldering  tower,  to  windward  and  to  lee, 

With  change  of  floors  and  stories,  flight  on  flight. 

That  clomb  and  curled  up  to  the  crowning  height 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  7 

Whence  men  might  see  wide  east  and  west  in  one 
And  on  one  sea  waned  moon  and  mounting  sun. 
And  severed  from  the  sea-rock's  base,  where  stand 
Some  worn  walls  yet,  they  saw  the  broken  strand, 
The  beachless  cliflF  that  in  the  sheer  sea  dips, 
The  sleepless  shore  inexorable  to  ships, 
And  the  straight  causeway's  bare  gaunt  spine  between 
The  sea-spanned  walls  and  naked  mainland's  green. 

Inland  from  Tintagel,  over  the  Camel  River, 
stands  Slaughter  Bridge,  where,  according  to 
tradition,  Arthur  was  defeated  in  that  great  battle 
of  the  West,  and  where  he  got  his  death  wound. 
Further  on  lies  Dozmare  Pool,  in  the  desolate 
moorland.  Here  it  was  that  the  King,  wander- 
ing with  Merlin,  beheld  an  arm  clothed  in  white 
samite  rise  ottt  of  the  water,  and  in  the  hand  the 
mystical  sword  Excalibur.  And  down  to  this 
same  lake  came  Sir  Bedivere  from  his  stricken 
lord  and  cast  the  blade  from  him;  and  afterward 
appeared  the  barge  bearing  the  three  Queens,  and 
wafted  the  dying  man  to  his  rest.  It  is  not  hard 
for  a  lover  of  poetry  who  stands  on  that  shore 
when  the  homeless  breeze  is  astir,  to  hear  in  im- 
agination the  cry  that  issued  from  the  boat, 
breaking  into — 

an  agony 
Of  lamentation,  like  a  wind  that  shrills 
All  night  in  a  waste  land,  where  no  one  comes, 
Or  hath  come,  since  the  making  of  the  world. 

But  to  the  unlettered  moormen  the  wailing  of  the 
storm  is  more  likely  to  sound  like  the  anguish  of 


8  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

a  certain  John  Tregeagle  of  infamous  memory, 
whose  ghost,  for  an  ancient,  cruel  sin,  is  com- 
pelled forever  to  bale  the  water  of  Dozmare  with 
?  pierced  limpet  shell;  while  Satan  himself  lurks 
among  the  reeds  and  leaps,  roaring,  upon  him  if 
for  a  moment  he  slackens  in  his  task.  The 
country  is  haunted  with  these  weary  revena?its 
who  keep  alive  the  memory  of  old  wrongs,  and 
not  a  few  of  Hawker's  poems  are  a  retelling  of 
the  local  legends  of  this  sort. 

It  is  natural  that  those  who  travelled  thither 
to  gather  up  the  traditions  of  the  land  should 
have  included  the  little  hamlet  of  Morwen- 
stow  in  their  pilgrimage.  Tennyson,  as  I  have 
said,  did  so  in  1848,  when  he  was  working 
at  his  Idyls  of  the  King,  and  he  has  left  in  his 
journal  this  brief  record  of  the  visit :  "June  2nd 
— Took  a  gig  to  Rev.  S.  Hawker  at  Morwen- 
stow,  passing  Comb  valley;  fine  view  over 
sea;  coldest  manner  of  Vicar  until  I  told  my 
name,  then  all  heartiness.  Walk  on  cliff  with 
him;  told  of  shipwreck."  The  note  is  brief  and 
dry,  as  befits  a  great  man  writing  of  a  lesser — 
lesser,  although  to  some  there  is  a  note  in  Haw- 
ker's poem  on  the  Sangraal  which  almost  compen- 
sates for  Tennyson's  art  and  his  finer  graces  of  the 
spirit.  But  the  solitary  parson  made  more  of  the 
occasion  and  wrote  out  in  his  notebook  one  of 
the  most  graphic  accounts  of  the  Laureate  that 
we  possess.  The  passage  is  too  long  to  repeat  in 
full,  but  part  of  it  may  serve  as  an  example  of 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  9 

the  talent  lavished  by  Hawker  on  letters  and 
memoranda  that  have  reached  the  public  only  by 
accident : 

I  found  my  guest  at  his  entrance  a  tall  swarthy 
Spanish-looking  man,  with  an  eye  like  a  sword.  He 
sate  down  and  we  conversed.  I  at  once  found  myself 
with  no  common  mind.  All  poetry  in  particular  he 
seemed  to  use  like  household  words,  and  as  chance  led 
to  the  mention  of  Homer's  picture  of  night  he  gave  at 
once  a  rendering  simple  and  fine.  "  When  the  Sky  is 
broken  up  and  the  myriad  Stars  roll  down,  and  the 
Shepherd's  heart  is  glad."  It  struck  me  that  the  trite 
translation  was  about  the  reverse  motion  of  this.  We  then 
talked  about  Cornwall  and  King  Arthur,  my  themes, 
and  I  quoted  Tennyson's  fine  acct.  of  the  restoration  of 
Excalibur  to  the  Lake.  .  .  .  [Follows  the  dialogue 
through  which  the  poet's  name  was  revealed  to  the  host, 
and  then]  We  went  on  our  way  to  the  rocks,  and  if  the 
converse  could  all  be  written  down  it  would  make,  I 
think,  as  nice  a  little  book  as  Charlotte  Elizabeth  [Mrs. 
Hawker]  could  herself  have  composed.  All  verses — 
all  lands — the  secret  history  of  many  of  his  poems, 
which  I  may  not  reveal — but  that  which  I  can  lawfully 
relate  I  will.  We  talked  of  the  sea,  which  he  and  I 
equally  adore.  But  as  he  told  me  strange  to  say  Words- 
worth cannot  bear  its  face.  My  solution  was,  that  nursed 
among  the  still  waters  with  a  mind  as  calm  and  equable 
as  his  lakes  the  Scenery  of  the  rough  Places  might  be 
too  boisterous  for  the  meek  man's  Soul.  He  agreed. 
We  discussed  novzioov  re  Kvjudrojv,  etc.,  and  I  was 
glad  to  find  that  he  half  agreed  with  a  thought  I  have 
long  cherished,  that  these  words  relate  to  the  £ar  and 
not  to  the  Eye.  [De  Quincey,  apparently  unknown  to 
Hawker,  had  expressed  the  same  fancy,  and  elsewhere 
Hawker  finds  confirmation  of  it  in  a  line  of  Catullus.] 


lO  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

He  did  not  disdain  a  version  of  mine  made  long 
ago:— 

"  Hark  how  old  Ocean  laughs  with  all  his  Waves." 

Then,  seated  on  the  brow  of  the  Cliflf,  with  Dundagel 
full  in  sight,  he  revealed  to  me  the  purpose  of  his  jour- 
ney to  the  West.   .  .  . 

I  lent  him  Books  and  MSB.  about  King  Arthur,  which 
he  carried  off,  and  which  I  perhaps  shall  never  see  again. 
Then  evening  fell.  He  arose  to  go ;  and  I  agreed  to 
drive  him  on  his  way.  He  demanded  a  pipe,  and  pro- 
duced a  package  of  very  common  shag.  By  great  good 
luck  my  Sexton  had  about  him  his  own  short  black  dud- 
heen,  which  accordingly  the  minstrel  filled  and  fired. 
Wild  language  occupied  the  way,  until  we  shook  farewell 
at  Combe.  This,  said  Tennyson,  has  indeed  been  a 
day  to  be  remembered,  at  least  it  is  one  which  I  shall  never 
again  forget.  The  Bard  is  a  handsome  well-formed 
man  and  tall,  more  like  a  Spaniard  than  an  Englishman 
— black,  long  elflocks  all  round  his  face,  mid  which  his 
eyes  not  only  shine  but  glare.  His  garments  loose  and 
full,  such  as  Bard  beseems,  and  over  all  a  large  dark 
Spanish  Cloak.  He  speaks  the  languages  both  old  and 
new,  and  has  manifestly  a  most  bibliothec  memory. 
His  voice  is  very  deep,  tuneful  and  slow — an  organ,  not 
a  breath.  His  temper,  which  I  tried,  seemed  very  calm 
— His  spirits  very  low.  When  I  quoted  "My  May  of 
Life"  [?]  and  again,  "  O  never  more  on  me,"  etc.,  he 
said  they  too  were  his  haunting  words. 

All  which  may  seem  to  concern  Tennyson 
rather  than  the  subject  of  this  sketch,  but  there 
is  a  fascination  in  these  meetings  of  the  poets 
which  always  tempts  one  to  linger;  some  breath 
of  larger  life  blows  from  them  to  us,  and  for  the 


THE    VICAR   OF    MORWENSTOW  II 

time  makes  us  of  their  company.  It  is  easy  to 
imagine  ourselves  visiting  the  same  rehques  of 
the  romantic  past,  and  turning  aside  with  Tenny- 
son to  Morwenstow.  Hedges  hue  the  road  on 
either  side,  and  it  has  been  observed  that  every 
bush  is  bent  away  from  the  sea,  so  steady  and  ruth- 
less are  the  landward  winds.  There  are  no  groves 
save  a  plantation  at  the  chapel,  and  here  every 
tree  crouches  imploringly  from  the  same  gales. 
We  may,  perhaps,  find  the  Vicar  in  his  glebe, 
which,  as  he  himself  has  described  it,  occupies  a 
position  of  wild  and  singular  beauty;  its  western 
boundary  is  the  sea,  skirted  by  tall  and  tremen- 
dous cliffs,  and  near  this  brink,  with  the  exquis- 
ite taste  of  ecclesiastical  antiquity,  is  placed  the 
church.  Chapel  and  glebe  and  parsonage,  after 
the  ancient  Celtic  tradition,  lie  alone  and  separ- 
ated from  the  hamlet  they  serve.  Despite  the 
"  coldest  manner  "  noted  by  Tennyson,  the  Vicar, 
when  his  suspicions  were  not  aroused,  had  usually 
a  hearty  welcome  for  strangers,  even  an  awkward 
eagerness  such  as  grows  on  one  who  is  much 
isolated.  He  stands  erect  in  the  field  overseeing 
the  care  of  his  garden  or  flocks,  a  tall,  sturdy  fig- 
ure in  striking  garb.  He  is  blond  with  weather- 
beaten  cheeks,  and  long,  light  hair,  which,  in 
later  life,  turns  white.  The  head  is  intellectual, 
but  the  eyes,  to  judge  from  the  portraits,  lack  con- 
centration, and  there  is  a  kind  of  pudginess  about 
the  mouth  and  chin,  the  result,  it  may  be,  of  his 
habit  of  taking  opium.     At  a  d  stance  he  might 


12  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

be  thought  a  venerable  old  lady.  He  wears  over 
all,  perhaps,  a  yellow  vestment  made  of  a  poncho, 
and  beneath  it  a  reddish-brown  cassock  ;  "  a 
blushing  brown,"  he  once  said,  "  was  the  hue  of 
Our  Lady's  hair,  as  typified  in  the  stem  of  the 
maiden-hair  fern."  Or,  possibly,  the  cassock 
has  been  supplanted  by  a  long  purple  coat.  Un- 
der this  is  a  fisherman's  blue  jersey,  as  befits  a 
fisher  of  men  ;  and  a  small  red  cross  marks  the 
spot  where  the  spear  entered  the  Saviour's  side. 
A  carpenter's  pencil,  betokening  the  life  at  Naza- 
reth, dangles  from  his  button-hole,  and  besides 
this  he  is  adorned  with  a  medal  of  gold  struck  in 
honour  of  the  promulgation,  in  1854,  of  the 
Immaculate  Conception.  His  trousers  are  of 
some  odd  colour,  navy  blue  or  red  brown  ;  black 
he  utterly  eschews,  and  has  stipulated  that  even 
in  death  he  shall  be  covered  with  a  purple  pall. 
Crimson  gloves  cover  his  hands  (he  kept  them  on 
even  in  church),  and  loose  Hessian  boots  rise 
from  his  feet.  His  hat  is  the  fez  of  a  Greek  priest 
or,  by  way  of  alternation,  a  broad-brimmed  felt 
of  the  favourite  reddish-brown.  The  "pastoral 
staff  "  is  cross-handled  to  complete  the  symbolism 
of  his  habiliments. 

The  costume  is  unusual,  to  say  the  least,  but 
let  a  man  beware  how  he  shows  surprise  and, 
above  all,  let  him  avoid  comment ;  for  our  mild- 
lookiug  parson  has  a  nimble  wit  and  a  cutting 
tongue.  More  than  one  patronising  stranger  has 
departed  from  this  provincial  nook  utterly  non- 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  1 3 

plussed  and  chop- fallen.  If  you  are  yourself  clad 
in  dignified  black,  and  especially  if  j'ou  are  a 
dissenting  clergyman,  it  may  be  as  well  to  gaze 
and  pass  on  without  salutation.  One  innocent 
guest  was  regaled  by  Hawker  with  the  story  of  a 
preceding  visitor  who  for  his  unlucky  garb  had 
been  pinned  to  the  earth  by  the  Vicar's  pet  stag 
Robin.  "This  Evangelical,"  said  Hawker, 
"  had  a  tail-coat ;  he  was  dressed  like  an  under- 
taker, sir.  Once  upon  a  time  there  was  one  like 
him  travelling  in  Egypt,  with  a  similar  coat  and  a 
tall  hat ;  and  the  Arabs  pursued  him,  calling 
him  the  'father  of  saucepans,  with  a  slit-tail.'  " 
The  guest  to  whom  the  story  was  told  wore  a 
like  garment,  and  found  the  situation  somewhat 
embarrassing. 

The  tame  stag,  with  its  proper  hatred  of  Evan- ' 
gelicals,  was  not  the  only  odd  pet  that  made 
favour  in  the  Vicar's  eyes.  At  one  time  he  was 
attended  everywhere  by  an  intelligent  black  pig, 
and  it  is  as  like  as  not  we  shall  meet  him  in  his 
glebe  surrounded  by  a  dog  and  nine  or  ten  cats. 
Both  dog  and  cats  are  so  indulged  that  they 
accompany  him  to  church  and  circle  about  him 
while  he  performs  the  divine  office.  There  is 
altogether  something  uncanny  in  the  familiarity 
between  this  man  and  the  wild  beasts  of  earth 
and  air.  "  Beans  and  peas,"  he  once  wrote,  "  are 
interdicted  by  the  Jackdaws.  We  have  sown 
twice,  and  twice  they  have  devoured  them  all. 
And  a  Scarecrow  put  up  by  my  old  Man,  was  so 


14  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

made  up  in  my  hat  and  broken  Cassock  that  they 
took  it  for  me,  and  came  around  it,  looking  up  to 
be  fed."  All  that  we  learn  about  him  confirms 
this  impression  of  his  almost  mythical  attachment 
to  the  soil,  and  if  we  talk  with  him  we  shall  dis- 
cover his  mind  to  be  a  veritable  storehouse  of 
Cornish  history  and  legend. 

Yet,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was  not  native  to 
the  Duchy,  but  was  born,  in  1803,  at  Plymouth, 
in  the  neighbouring  county  of  Devon.  Even  as  a 
boy  he  made  himself  notorious  for  his  droll 
pranks  and  practical  jokes.  For  several  years  he 
attended  the  Cheltenham  Grammar  School  at  the 
expense  of  an  aunt,  and  while  there  published  his 
first  book  of  poems,  Te7idrils,  by  Reuben,  I^ater 
in  life  he  could  not  even  recall  the  name  of  this 
early  venture.  At  the  age  of  nineteen  he  was 
matriculated  at  Pembroke  College,  Oxford,  and 
took  his  B.A.  degree  five  years  later.  As  a 
scholar  he  seems  not  to  have  risen  much  above 
the  average,  though  he  won  the  Newdigate  with 
a  poem  on  Pompeii.  The  most  notorious  esca- 
pade of  his  college  career  was  his  marriage, 
which,  even  without  the  embellishments  added 
by  Mr.  Baring-Gould,  was  singular  enough.  His 
father  had  been  a  physician,  but  had  abandoned 
the  profession  for  holy  orders  and  was  incumbent 
of  the  living  at  Stratton,  not  far  from  Morwen- 
stovv.  Robert  had  become  acquainted  with  the 
family  of  Colonel  Wrey  I'ans,  who  dwelt  in  the 
neighbourhood  of  this  place,  and  in  1823  he  mar- 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  1 5 

ried  one  of  the  daughters,  Charlotte,  The  bride, 
whom  he  carried  back  with  him  to  Oxford,  was 
forty-one,  while  he  was  still  under  twenty;  but 
the  union  turned  out  to  be  unusually  happy.  He 
was  until  her  death,  in  1863  at  the  age  of  eighty, 
a  kind  and  devoted  husband.  During  her  last 
illness  he  gave  much  of  his  time  to  reading  aloud 
to  her,  and  it  is  said  that  after  going  through  a 
three-volume  novel  so  great  was  his  abstraction 
that  he  knew  no  more  of  the  book  than  if  he  had 
never  seen  it.  Her  loss  left  him  in  a  state  of 
pathetic  loneliness  and  depression,  but  he  soon 
found  consolation.  In  something  less  than  two 
years  he  took  to  himself  a  new  wife,  a  Miss 
Pauline  Kuczynski,  the  daughter  of  a  Polish  exile 
and  an  Englishwoman.  As  if  to  balance  the  dis- 
parity of  the  first  marriage,  the  groom  was  now 
sixt3'-one  and  the  bride  only  twenty  ;  yet  again 
the  venture  proved  in  every  way  fortunate. 

But  this  is  to  anticipate.  On  leaving  Oxford 
Hawker  was  appointed  to  the  curacy  of  North 
Tamerton,  and  after  a  brief  period  was  removed 
to  Morwenstow,  where  he  resided  for  forty  years, 
seldom  crossing  the  boundary  of  his  parish  during 
all  that  time.  He  became,  as  it  were,  the  geiims 
loci,  in  whom  the  spirit  of  the  valley  and  sea 
found  expression.  The  very  towns  of  Cornwall 
near  by  seemed  to  him  remote  and  set  in  some 
unvisited  province  of  the  world.  "No  one  can 
even  imagine  the  horror  it  is  to  me,"  he  once 
wrote  to  a  friend,  after  a  residence  of  twenty-eight 


1 6  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

years,  "to  look  forward  to  the  journey  from 
hence  to  Stratton  to  attend  the  Confirmation. 
The  streets,  the  strange  faces,  the  unusual  crowd 
— the  Salutations  in  the  market-place  are  to  me,  a 
shy,  nervous  man,  an  actual  trial  and  a  burthen 
to  bear.  When  I  had  to  attend  at  the  Archdea- 
con's Visitation  at  Launceston,  twenty-five  miles 
off,  every  year,  I  could  not  sleep  for  long  nights 
before,  and  the  faint  and  sickening  sensation  I 
felt  at  the  aspect  of  the  Town  was  humiliating 
and  depressing  indeed."  It  was  one  of  the 
whims  of  a  more  eccentric  power  than  himself 
that  he  should  after  all  have  died  away  from 
home.  Morwenstow  had  not  hitherto  enjoyed  a 
resident  vicar  for  a  century,  and  Hawker  found 
the  church  dilapidated,  and  the  people,  rude  and 
ignorant  peasants  and  seamen  for  the  most  part, 
unattached.  He  set  himself  diligently  to  right 
these  conditions,  and  by  persistence  and  a  kind 
of  rough  wisdom  succeeded.  To  restore  the 
church,  whose  legendary  history  appealed  to  his 
fancy,  he  drew  heavily  on  the  small  fortune  of 
his  wife,  laying  up  for  himself  endless  debts  and 
difficulties  in  the  future.  He  also  built  a  vicar- 
age, in  which  he  did  not  fail  to  embody  some  of 
his  own  original  notions.  "  The  kitchen  chim- 
ney," he  explained,  "perplexed  me  very  much, 
till  I  bethought  me  of  my  mother's  tomb  ;  and 
there  it  is,  in  its  exact  shape  and  dimensions." 
His  yearly  revenue  was  ^365,  as  he  announced 
in  an  inscription  placed  over  the  front  door: 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  1 7 

A  House,  a  Glebe,  a  Pound  a  Day  ; 
A  Pleasant  Place  to  "Watch  and  Pray. 
Be  true  to  Church— Be  kind  to  Poor, 
O  Minister !  forevermore. 

In  the  solitude  of  this  haunted  land  his  mind 
brooded  on  its  own  fancies  until  the  actual  and 
the  visionary  lost  their  sharp  distinction  for  him. 
Probably  the  habit  of  opium-taking  strengthened 
the  reality  of  this  dream-world.  As  a  conse- 
quence, in  dealing  with  him  it  is  always  difficult 
to  know  what  should  be  attributed  to  religion 
and  what  belongs  to  superstition  and  pure  char- 
latanry. When  he  wrote  of  Joseph  of  Arima- 
thea's  Syrian  home  those  two  perfect  lines, — 

Young  men,  that  no  one  knew,  went  in  and  out, 
With  a  far  look  in  their  eternal  eyes, 

he  was  merely  repeating  what  he  held  to  be  his 
own  experience.  So  real  would  he  have  these 
angelic  visitants  to  be  that  he  impressed  on 
children's  minds  the  fact  that  they  were  wrongly 
depicted  with  wings.  It  is  easy,  in  dealing  with 
such  a  character,  to  write  down  the  word  dupe 
or  hypocrite,  but  who  shall  presume  to  draw  the 
boundary  between  these  morbid  states  and  the 
profounder  conviction  of  celestial  communion  ? 
And  has  not  the  least  religious  of  poets  said  it,  Et 
sunt  commercia  ccell  ?  * 

'  In  the  year  1895  Lionel  Johnson  wrote  this  sonnet 
on  Hawker  of  3Iorwenstow,  alluding  to  his  death-bed 
conversion  and  to  his  visionary  life  : 
2 


l8  SIIELBURNE    ESSAYS 

In  other  nmtters  his  supernaturalism  assumed 
a  grosser  form.  He  had  charms  for  the  evil  eye 
and  for  inflictions  of  the  body.  He  recognised  a 
witch  by  the  five  black  spots  placed  diagonally 
under  her  tongue,  like  those  made  in  the  feet  of 
the  swine  by  the  entrance  of  the  devils  at  Gad- 
ara.  Elemental  demons  and  emissaries  of  Satan 
beset  his  path,  and  it  is  not  unusual  to  come 
upon  such  a  note  as  this  in  his  letters:  "  As  I 
entered  the  Gulph  between  the  Vallies  to-day,  a 
Storm  leaped  from  the  Sea  and  rushed  at  me 
roaring — I  recognised  a  Demon  and  put  Carrow 
into  a  gallop  and  so  escaped.  But  it  was  perilous 
work.  There  once  I  saw  a  Brownie;  and  Thence 
at  Night  the  Northern  Glances  Gleam."  He 
had  a  philosophy  for  these  apparitions  and  con- 
ceived a  medium  midway  between  matter  and 


"  Strong  Shepherd  of  thy  sheep,  pasturers  of  the  sea  ; 
Far  on  the  Western  marge,  thy  passionate  Cornish  land  ! 
Oh,  that  from  out  thy  Paradise  thou  could'st  thine  hand 
Reach  forth  to  mine,  and  I  might  tell  my  love  to  thee  ! 
For  one  the  faith,  and  one  the  joy,  of  thee  and  me. 
Catholic  faith  and  Celtic  joy  :  I  understand 
Somewhat,  I  too,  the  Messengers  from  Sion  strand  ; 
The  voices  and  the  visions  of  the  Mystery. 

Ah,  not  the  Chaunt  alone  was  thine  :  thine  too  the  Quest ! 
And  at  the  last  the  Sangraal  of  the  Paschal  Christ 
Flashed  down  its  fair  red  Glory  to  those  dying  eyes  : 
They  closed  in  death,  and  opened  on  the  Victim's  Breast. 
Now,  while  they  look  for  ever  on  the  Sacrificed, 
Remember,  how  thine  ancient  race  in  twilight  lies  !" 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  1 9 

spirit  for  which  he  coined  the  outlandish  name 
of  "  Numyne."  This  was  nothing  less  than 
the  "  sacramental  element  of  the  Shechinah,"  the 
"  Mater  et  Filia  Dei"  of  the  Rabbins,  the  "  at- 
mosphere of  the  angels,"  a  blend  of  God  and 
man,  and  a  dozen  other  quaint  conceptions  jura- 
bled  together  from  the  luminiferous  ether  of 
science  and  the  aura  animcz  of  the  mediaeval 
schoolmen.  Yet  if  he  could  be  solemn  over  his 
beliefs  one  moment,  he  could  treat  them  as  a  jest 
the  next.  He  is  known  to  have  pointed  out  with 
apparent  seriousness  the  haunt  of  mermaids  to  a 
stranger,  but  Mr.  Baring- Gould  also  tells  how, 
when  a  young  man,  he  decked  himself  in  sea- 
weeds and  an  oilskin  wrap  and,  so  disguised,  sat 
on  a  rock  in  the  moonlight  and  sang,  to  the  great 
wonderment  of  the  neighbourhood.  Undoubtedly 
there  was  not  a  little  of  this  deliberate  attempt  at 
mystification  in  the  minor  eccentricities  of  the 
reverend  gentleman,  and  Superstition  entwined 
herself  cunningly  with  Charlatanry',  as  is  the 
custom  with  those  fosfer  sisters. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  any  great  and 
accomplished  work  should  proceed  from  such  a 
life  and  character.  He  was,  indeed,  not  without 
natural  ambition,  and  in  his  youth  had  made  a 
brave  effort  to  imitate  Byron  and  other  reigning 
favourites  of  the  day.  But  as  time  slipped  hy  and 
he  became  more  and  more  involved  in  the  cares 
and  solitudes  of  his  parish,  he  realised  with  some 
bitterness  that  the  race  of  fame  was  not  for  him. 


20  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

His  letters  contain  pathetic  allusions  to  the  in- 
numerable memorandum  books  into  which  he 
had  poured  his  scattered  thoughts  and  which  he 
hoped  might  one  day  be  "read  and  printed  as 
'  the  Fragments  of  a  broken  mind.'  "  The 
phrase  evidently  flattered  his  vanity,  and  came 
up  for  use  more  than  once  ;  it  had  occurred  in  a 
lyric  written  as  early  as  1840  : 

All,  all  is  gone — no  longer  roll 
Vision  and  dream  around  my  soul : 
But,  in  their  stead,  float  down  the  wind 
These  fragments  of  a  broken  mind. 

And  in  the  noblest  of  his  poems  he  ptit  into  the 
mouth  of  King  Arthur  the  expression  of  his  own 
futile  doom,  mingled  with  laments  for  an  erring 
land.  Had  he  always,  or  often,  written  as  mag- 
nificently as  this,  there  would  be  no  need  to  make 
allowance  for  his  shortcomings  : 

Ha  !  Sirs — ye  seek  a  noble  crest  to-day, 

To  win  and  wear  the  starry  Sangraal, 

The  link  that  binds  to  God  a  lonely  land. 

Would  that  my  arm  went  with  j'ou,  like  my  heart ! 

But  the  true  shepherd  must  not  shun  the  fold  : 

For  in  this  flock  are  crouching  grievous  wolves, 

And  chief  among  them  all,  my  own  false  kin. 

Therefore  I  tarry  by  the  cruel  sea. 

To  hear  at  eve  the  treacherous  mermaid's  song, 

And  watch  the  wallowing  monsters  of  the  wave, — 

'Mid  all  things  fierce,  and  wild,  and  strange,  alone ! 

Ah  !  native  Cornwall  !  throned  upon  the  hills. 
Thy  moorland  pathways  worn  by  Angel  feet, 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  21 

Thy  streams  that  marcli  in  music  to  the  sea 
*Mid  Ocean's  merry  noise,  his  billowy  laugh  ! 
Ah  me  !  a  gloom  falls  heavy  on  my  soul — 
The  birds  that  sung  to  me  in  j-outh  are  dead  ; 
I  think,  in  dreamy  vigils  of  the  night, 
It  may  be  God  is  angry  with  my  land, 
Too  much  athirst  for  fame,  too  fond  of  blood  ; 
And  all  for  earth,  for  shadows,  and  the  dream 
To  glean  an  echo  from  the  winds  of  song  ! 

It  is  the  cry  of  a  man  who  feels  his  powers 
caught  ill  some  spell  of  impotence,  who  knows 
there  are  great  things  to  do  and  great  labourers 
starting  for  the  field,  while  he  lingers  behind  in 
a  lesser  duty  and  a  lonelier  dream.  But  his 
worst  fear  was  baseless  : 

I  -would  not  be  forgotten  in  this  land. 

No ;  as  that  strange  West  Country  is  trodden 
into  conformity  with  the  routine  of  civilisation, 
he  is  likely  to  become  better  and  more  distinctly 
known  as  the  personification  of  a  semi-mythical 
past.  No  other  writer  can  supplant  him.  For 
we  must  recognise  that  there  are  two  kinds  of 
poetical  genius,  the  essential  and  the  contingent, 
and  that  their  claims  on  our  memory  are  as 
diverse  as  their  faculties.  Nor  is  this  division 
quite  coterminous  with  that  into  major  and  minor 
poets.  Keats  and  Wordsworth  both  belong  to 
the  major  group,  yet  one  is  essentially,  whereas 
the  other  is  in  large  measure  contingently,  poetic. 
We  judge  the  work  of  Keats  in  itself,  and  its 
value  rises  or  sinks  pure!}'  in  proportion  to  its 
own  intrinsic  interest ;  it  would  be  almost  the 


22  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

same  to  us  if  we  had  never  heard  Ihe  writer's 
name.  On  the  contrary,  no  small  portion  of 
Wordsworth's  verse,  and  that  not  always  the 
least  cherished,  derives  its  weight  and  signifi- 
cance from  what  we  know  of  the  poet's  own 
character  and  of  his  philosophy.  It  is  the  voice 
of  the  High  Priest  of  Nature  to  which  we  are  lis- 
tening, and  behind  his  words  is  the  authority  of  a 
grave  teacher.  Take  away  the  memory  of  that 
systematic  life  with  its  associations,  forget  the 
hallowed  beauty  of  the  Lake  Country,  and  how 
much  of  Wordsworth's  celebrity  would  be  an- 
nulled! Now  it  is  just  these  contingent  qualities 
that  render  even  the  minor  verse  of  our  Cornish 
Vicar  precious.  You  may  read  his  book  of 
poems  alone  with  comparative  coldness  ;  but  first 
go  through  Mr.  Byles's  admirable  but  rather 
bulky  memoir,  read  Hawker's  own  prose 
sketches,  steep  your  mind  in  the  history  and 
topography  of  Cornwall,  and  then  turn  once  more 
to  the  poetry.  The  difference  of  its  effect  will  be 
startling. 

A  specific  example  will  make  clear  what  is 
meant  by  the  contingent  interest  of  Hawker's 
work.  One  of  his  shorter  ballads  is  founded  on 
the  story  told  him  of  the  death  of  a  noted 
wrecker,  Mawgan  of  Melhuach  : 

'T  was  a  fierce  night  when  old  Mawgan  died, 
Men  shuddered  to  hear  the  rolling  tide: 
The  wreckers  fled  fast  from  the  awful  shore, 
They  had  heard  strange  voices  amid  the  roar. 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  23 

"Out  with  tlie  boat  there,"  some  one  cried, — 
"  Will  he  never  come  ?     We  shall  lose  the  tide: 
His  berth  is  trim  and  his  cabin  stored, 
He  's  a  weary  long  time  coming  on  board." 

The  old  man  struggled  upon  the  bed: 

He  knew  the  words  that  the  voices  said; 

Wildly  he  shriek'd  as  his  eyes  grew  dim, 

"He  was  dead  !  he  was  dead !  when  I  buried  him." 

Hark  yet  again  to  the  devilish  roar  ! 
"  He  was  nimble  once  with  a  ship  on  shore; 
Come  !  come  !  old  man,   'tis  a  vain  delay, 
We  must  make  the  offing  by  break  of  day." 

Hard  was  the  struggle,  but  at  the  last. 
With  a  stormy  pang  old  Mawgan  pass'd, 
And  away,  away,  beneath  their  sight, 
Gleam 'd  the  red  sail  at  pitch  of  night. 

The  workmanship  of  the  piece  is  sufficiently 
good,  and  if  read  without  preparation  it  might 
pass  as  a  fair  specimen  of  the  school  which  pro- 
duced Southej'-'s  Old  Woman  of  Berkeley  and  a 
host  of  similar  ballads  of  the  time.  Like  South- 
ey's  work,  it  cannot  be  classed  with  such  a  poem 
as  Keats' s  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci,  which 
depends  for  its  effect  on  emotions  that  lurk  in 
every  human  breast  and  hence  requires  no 
realism  behind  its  supernatural  imagery  ;  but, 
when  properly  considered,  it  also  differs  as  radi- 
cally from  the  spurious  school  which  it  seems  to 
resemble.  Southey's  lines  are  clever  and  catch 
the  fancy,  and  nothing  more  ;  they  have  no  back- 
ground of  real  terror.     On  the  contrary,  the  full 


24  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

effect  of  Hawker's  ballad  is  to  be  got  by  reading 
it  repeatedly  and  lingeringh'-,  and  by  allowing 
the  memories  of  the  poet's  own  experiences  to 
blend  with  the  impression  of  the  verse.  Gradu- 
ally, as  at  the  sound  of  a  spell,  the  memories  of 
the  sea  about  those  pitiless  coasts  arise  in  the 
mind.  We  recall  the  legends  of  great  storms  and 
terrible  wrecks  from  the  days  of  the  Spanish 
Armada  to  the  present,  and  the  wild  life  of  the 
Western  men,  which  had  not  wholly  ceased  in 
Hawker's  own  time.  So  constant  is  the  peril 
of  the  ocean  that  even  to-day  a  child  in  these 
towns  is  rebuked  if  he  brings  to  the  table  a  loaf 
of  bread  resting  on  its  cut  side — it  looks  too  much 
like  a  vessel  floating  bottom  upwards.  But  if 
the  waves  take  away,  they  also  restore,  and  the 
history  of  that  coast  is  a  long  record  of  heroic 
fighting  with  England's  enemies  and  of  no  less 
ruthless  smuggling  and  wrecking.  In  one  of  the 
chapters  of  his  Footprints  in  Far  Cornwall,  Haw- 
ker relates  with  extraordinary  vividness  his  own 
labours  in  taming  the  habits  of  these  wreckers, 
who  did  not  scruple  to  allure  vessels  on  the  rocks 
with  false  lights.  It  was  reckoned  an  omen  of 
ill-luck  to  restore  life  to  the  bodies  washed  ashore, 
as  he  once  learned  emphatically  from  his  own 
servant  ;  and  horrible  tales  were  abroad  of  occa- 
sions when  the  murderous  waves  were  not  swift 
enough  in  their  work  for  these  ghouls  of  the  sea. 
To  be  awakened  at  midnight  when  the  wind  was 
screeching  like  a  lost  soul,  to  clamber  down  the 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  25 

precipitous  cliff  some  three  hundred  feet  with  the 
spray  lashing  about  him,  to  labour  in  the  surf  for 
the  rescue  of  a  forlorn  ship,  was  an  adventure 
that  tried  the  nerves  and  troubled  the  imagina- 
tion. Too  often  only  the  lifeless  bodies  came  to 
his  hands,  but  these  at  least  he  saved  from  dese- 
cration and  buried  with  decent  ceremony. 

There  had  been  more  than  one  Mawgan  in  his 
parish.  Just  before  Hawker's  time  a  stranger, 
whose  origin  and  end  were  wrapped  in  obscurity, 
gained  the  sobriquet  of ' '  Cruel  Coppinger ' '  for  his 
lawless  practices.  His  life  and  mysterious  disap- 
pearance furnished  Hawker  with  one  of  his  best 
prose  sketches,  and  the  same  character  figures  in 
Mr.  Baring-Gould's  In  the  Roar  of  the  Sea.  Still 
more  like  the  fate  of  Mawgan  was  the  story  sent 
to  the  Times  by  a  resident  of  the  district  during 
Hawker's  incumbency.  The  storms  had  been 
unusually  severe,  and  one  night  a  cloud  filled 
with  a  fiery  glow  was  seen  by  many  of  the  sailors 
gliding  up  the  valley  to  the  house  of  a  notorious 
merchant  and  wrecker,  and  passing  inland  along 
the  glen  until  it  reached  a  church  where  his 
family  lay  buried.  Hawker  himself  half,  or 
wholly,  believed  the  tale,  and  it  evidently  im- 
pressed him  deeply.  His  own  knowledge  of  the 
event  he  writes  in  a  letter  : 

On  Sunday  evening  this  day  week went  out  on 

the  cliffs,  and  was  seen  watching  the  sea,  it  is  supposed 
for  Wreck.  He  returned  quite  well  and  went  to  bed. 
At  5  in  the  morning  his  Servants  heard  him  walk  about 


26  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

his  room.  Then  his  footsteps  ceased.  He  had  returned 
to  bed.  At  Six  O'Clock  a  vast  roll  of  the  tide  came  up 
the  Harbour,  and  one  of  his  Vessels  broke  loose.  The 
Servants  went  up  to  tell  him — knocked — no  answer — 
again — silence — frightened,  they  went  in,  and  there  he 
lay  quite  dead,  His  head  upon  his  hand.  Ever  since  that 
day  it  is  certain  the  storms  have  been  continual — again 
and  again  with  violence,  and  while  I  now  write  my  Table 
trembles  with  the  wind.  All  this  is  awful.  The  Enemy 
of  Man,  you  know,  is  called  the  Prince  of  the  Powers  of 
the  Air. 

But  it  was  something  more  than  superstition 
that  supported  the  Vicar  in  his  long  years  of  trib- 
ulation. Above  all  these  wandering  fires  glowed 
the  steady  light  of  faith,  and  he  is  one  of  that 
succession  of  clergymen,  beginning  with  the 
saintly  George  Herbert,  who  from  the  heart  of 
their  isolated  parishes  have  enriched  English 
poetry  with  a  body  of  pure  and  high  meditation. 
I  do  not  know  how  it  may  be  with  others,  but 
with  me  the  knowledge  of  Hawker's  faithful 
service,  and  of  the  ancient  traditions  of  Celtic  and 
Saxon  saints  amidst  which  he  lived,  lends  a 
peculiar  charm  to  stanzas  that  might  otherwise 
appear  almost  commonplace.  I  discover  this 
charm  in  such  lines  as  these  : 

Come,  then,  sad  river,  let  our  footsteps  blend 
Onward,  by  silent  bank,  and  nameless  stone  : 

Our  years  began  alike,  so  let  them  end, — 
We  live  with  many  men,  we  die  alone  ; — 

and    I   find  something  quite  different  from  the 
familiar  cant  of  piety  in  his  poem  to  Morzvcnnce 


THE    VICAR   OF    MORWENSTOW  2  7 

Statio,  that  is,  as  he  interprets  with  quaint  ped- 
antry," The  Stow,  or  the  Place,  of  St.  Morwenna  ; 
hence  the  Breviate,  hodie,  Morwenstow  ' '  : 

My  Saxon  shrine !  the  only  ground 

Wherein  this  weary  heart  hath  rest : 
What  years  the  birds  of  God  have  found 

Along  thy  walls  their  sacred  nest ! 
The  storm — the  blast — the  tempest  shock 

Have  beat  upon  those  walls  in  vain  ; 
She  stands — a  daughter  of  the  rock — 

The  changeless  God's  eternal  fane. 

Huge,  mighty,  massive,  hard,  and  strong, 

Were  the  choice  stones  they  lifted  then  : 
The  vision  of  their  hope  was  long. 

They  knew  their  God,  those  faithful  men. 
They  pitch'd  no  tent  for  change  or  death, 

No  home  to  last  man's  shadowy  day  ; 
There  !  there  !  the  everlasting  breath. 

Would  breathe  whole  centuries  away. 

See  now,  along  that  pillar'd  aisle. 

The  graven  arches,  firm  and  fair : 
They  bend  their  shoulders  to  the  toil, 

And  lift  the  hollow  roof  in  air. 
A  sign  !  beneath  the  ship  we  stand, 

The  inverted  vessel's  arching  side  ; 
Forsaken — when  the  fisher-band 

Went  forth  to  sweep  a  mightier  tide. 

Pace  we  the  ground  !  our  footsteps  tread 
A  cross — the  builder's  holiest  form  : 

That  awful  couch,  where  once  was  shed 
The  blood,  with  man's  forgiveness  warm. 


28  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

And  here,  just  where  His  mighty  breast 

Throbb'd  the  last  agony  away, 
They  bade  the  voice  of  worship  rest. 

And  white-robed  Levites  pause  and  pray. 

How  all  things  glow  with  life  and  thought, 

Where'er  our  faithful  fathers  trod  ! 
The  very  ground  with  speech  is  fraught, 

The  air  is  eloquent  of  God. 
In  vain  would  doubt  or  mockery  hide 

The  buried  echoes  of  the  past ; 
A  voice  of  strength,  a  voice  of  pride, 

Here  dwells  amid  the  storm  and  blast. 

To  understand  Hawker's  solemn  reverence  for 
the  temple  and  saint  which  he  served,  one  must 
go  back  to  the  days  of  the  early  Celtic  domina- 
tion. It  was  the  custom  then  for  a  holy  man  to 
choose  some  bit  of  land,  or  llan,  and  there  fast 
and  pray  for  forty  days  as  a  sign  of  possession. 
After  that  the  sacred  precinct  was  his  forever ; 
he  did  not  pass  away,  but  abode  as  the  guardian 
and  owner  of  the  edifice  which  might  be  erected 
to  his  name.  To  a  man  of  Hawker's  imaginative 
temperament,  the  patron  of  his  church  was  a  liv- 
ing presence,  listening  to  the  words  and  following 
with  spirit  eyes  the  acts  of  his  worship.  But  his 
attempt  to  bind  the  present  and  the  past  together 
in  a  kind  of  reverent  imitation  did  not  end  with 
his  ministrations  at  the  altar.  "  Cornwall,"  as 
it  has  been  said,  "  was  the  Thebaid  of  the 
Welsh,"  and  the  relics  of  the  rude  stone  cells  still 
exist  where  these  anchorites  of  the  moors  dwelt 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  29 

in  solitary  contemplation.  As  a  young  man, 
before  he  had  come  to  Morwenstow,  Hawker  had, 
after  the  manner  of  these  exiled  hermits,  built 
himself  a  perch  on  the  cliff  near  Whitstone, 
where  he  might  be  alone  with  his  thoughts,  and, 
as  he  would  say  solemnly,  "  with  God."  And 
later,  again,  at  Morwenstow,  out  of  the  timbers 
cast  up  by  wrecks,  he  constructed  a  hut,  from 
which,  looking  out  over  the  sea  far  below,  like 
another  Odysseus  on  his  wave-beaten  island,  he 
beheld  visions  of  a  longed-for  home  beyond  the 
sunset.  One  may  see  a  picture  of  this  cell  in  Mr. 
Byles's  Life — a  little  chamber  half-buried  in  the 
side  of  the  steep  heathery  hill,  with  a  mound  of 
earth  over  the  roof.  There  is  no  window  or 
other  outlet  besides  the  door  which  opens  seaward 
— a  mere  covering  from  the  inclement  weather. 
Here,  during  the  period  of  his  widowhood.  Haw- 
ker composed  that  fragment  of  the  work  which 
he  had  long  contemplated,  The  Quest  of  the  San- 
graal;  and  here  a  friend  tells  of  visiting  him  one 
wild  evening  when  the  sun  had  gone  down  like  a 
ball  of  red-hot  iron  into  the  deep,  and  of  hearing 
him  recite  from  memory  the  completed  canto. 

It  is  a  poem  whose  power  grows  upon  you  with 
acquaintance,  and  upon  it  Hawker's  fame  as  an 
artist  must  ultimately  hang.  So  much  of  his 
own  life  is  in  it  that  I  have  already  quoted  a 
number  of  the  lines  to  illustrate  the  various 
phases  of  his  character, — the  vision  of  the  young 
men  with  a  far  look  in  their  eternal  eyes,  the 


30  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

image  of  the  sea  sobbing  like  a  drunken  giant 
below  Tintagel  on  its  throne,  the  lament  of 
Arthur  abiding  at  home  while  his  knights  went 
out  on  the  sacred  Quest.  At  the  very  opening  of 
the  poem  there  is  a  reminiscence  of  the  old  Celtic 
hermits,  not  without  allusion  to  the  spot  where, 
in  imitation  of  their  withdrawal  from  the  world, 
the  poet  himself  retired  for  prayer  and  composi- 
tion : 

They  had  their  lodges  in  the  wilderness, 

Or  built  them  cells  beside  the  shadowy  sea, 

And  there  they  dwelt  with  angels,  like  a  dream  : 

So  they  uuroll'd  the  volume  of  the  Book, 

And  fill'd  the  fields  of  the  Evangelist 

With  antique  thoughts,  that  breath'd  of  Paradise. 

And  the  subiect  of  the  lay — the  sending  out  of 
the  four  chief  knights  to  the  East  and  West  and 
North  and  South  in  search  of  the  vanished  cup — 
is  nothing  less  than  the  regeneration  which  was 
to  come  to  England  when  men  should  once  more 
reverence  as  in  old  days  the  mystic  chalice  of 
the  Communion.  Hawker's  work  was,  in  this 
respect,  a  part  of  that  awakening  of  the  religious 
imagination  which  followed  the  Tractarian 
Movement.  It  belongs  to  the  same  sacramenta- 
rian  impulse  which  produced  John  higlesani, 
although,  like  Shorthouse,  he  never  identified 
himself  with  the  armies  of  High  or  I,ow  Church, 
while,  unlike  Shorthouse,  he  was,  through  his 
reverence  of  the  priestly  function,  brought  at  the 
end  into  the  Roman  fold. 


THE    VICAR    OF    MORWENSTOW  3 1 

But  the  more  inevitable  comparison,  or  con- 
trast, is  with  that  Idyl  of  the  King  which  deals 
with  the  same  Quest.  We  have  seen  Tennyson 
and  Hawker  looking  out  together  toward  Tin- 
tagel  and  talking  over  the  deeds  of  the  King  who 
issued  from  that  fortress.  It  is  worth  while  to 
read  in  succession  the  results  of  their  conversa- 
tion, if  only  to  learn  how  the  poetic  pleasure  may 
vary  in  kind  as  well  as  in  degree  ;  the  two  poems 
are  a  notable  illustration  of  that  distinction  be- 
tween the  essential  and  the  contingent.  So  far, 
indeed,  is  Tennyson's  rhapsody  of  The  Holy 
Grail  removed  from  the  accessories  of  time  and 
place  and  individual  experience  that  to  some  it 
may  seem  to  rise  perilously  near  to  the  inane. 
Instead  of  Hawker's  account  of  the  knights  set- 
ting forth  from  the  actual  Tintagel,  "where  gate 
and  bulwark  darken  o'er  the  sea,"  Tennyson 
carries  us  to  the  fantastic  hall  that  Merlin  raised 
at  Camelot,  with  its  "  four  great  zones  of  sculp- 
ture, set  betwixt  With  many  a  mystic  symbol." 
The  landscape,  from  the  first  description  of  the 
*'  April  morn  That  puff'd  the  swaying  branches 
into  smoke,"  is  in  a  region  that  no  eye  has  beheld 
and  no  human  foot  has  ever  trod.  And  the  sea 
— it  is  not  on  the  Severn  shores  that  Lancelot 
encountered  that  darkening  storm  : 

So  loud  a  blast  along  the  shore  and  sea. 
Ye  could  not  hear  the  waters  for  the  blast, 
Tho'  heapt  in  mounds  and  ridges  all  the  sea 


32  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Drove  like  a  cataract,  and  all  the  sand 
Swept  like  a  river,  and  the  clouded  heavens 
Were  shaken  with  the  motion  and  the  sound. 

And  as  the  time  and  place,  so  is  the  action. 
The  popular  tradition,  or  legend,  has  evaporated 
into  a  vision  of  the  poet's  own  brain  which  no 
man  ever  believed  or  could  believe  to  be  historic. 
There  is  not  the  slightest  illusion  in  the  reader  's 
mind  that  these  are  real  knights  who  are  seeking 
a  vessel  supposed  somewhere  still  to  be  hidden 
in  the  earth  ;  it  is  characteristic  of  Tennj'son's 
Arthur  that  he  laments  the  Quest  as  a  kind 
of  ruinous  madness  sent  among  his  followers, 
whereas  in  Hawker's  poem  he  only  regrets  that 
he  himself  is  restrained  from  the  holy  adventure. 
Hawker  wrote  as  a  Churchman,  having  his  eye 
on  an  actual  state  of  England  in  the  past  and 
seeing  in  prophecy  a  corresponding  regeneration. 
Place  by  the  side  of  those  farewell  lines  which  I 
have  already  quoted  from  Hawker, 

Ha !  Sirs — ye  seek  a  noble  crest  to-day, 

these  words  in  which  the  Arthur  of  the  Idyls  ex- 
plains his  home-staying  and  his  blindness  to  the 
vision.  He,  too,  is  a  King  who  cannot  leave  his 
allotted  field  until  his  work  be  done, — 

but,  being  done, 
Let  visions  of  the  night  or  of  the  day 
Come,  as  they  will ;  and  many  a  time  they  come, 
Until  this  earth  he  walks  on  seems  not  earth. 
This  light  that  strikes  his  eyeball  is  not  light, 


THE    VICAR   OF    MORWENSTOW  33 

This  air  that  smites  his  forehead  is  not  air 

But  vision — yea,  his  very  hand  and  foot — 

In  moments  when  he  feels  he  cannot  die, 

And  knows  himself  no  vision  to  himself, 

Nor  the  high  God  a  vision,  nor  that  One 

Who  rose  again  :  ye  have  seen  what  ye  have  seen. 

Is  it  not  plain  that  we  are  here  rapt  from  this 
earth  into  the  land  of  the  spirit?  It  is  even  safe, 
I  think,  to  say  that  this  song  of  The  Holy  Grail 
is  the  most  purely  spiritual  poem  in  the  language. 
I  would  not  tarnish  its  beauty  with  a  clumsy 
paraphrase  of  its  sense,  for,  indeed,  the  value  of 
this  mystical  music  lies  entirely  in  the  spontan- 
eous echo  stirred  in  the  reader's  breast.  But 
clearly  it  is,  in  a  general  way,  an  expression  of 
that  hungering  after  the  ideal  which  exists  in 
every  human  being,  obscured  for  the  most  part 
by  the  necessities  of  the  day,  and  to  those  even 
who  hearken  to  its  summons  speaking  so  vaguely 
that  all  but  one  or  two  go  out  to  "follow  wander- 
ing fires,  lost  in  the  quagmire." 

There  is  nothing  of  this  universal  meaning  in 
Hawker's  lines,  and  they  are  little  concerned 
with  that  inner  truth  which  is  essential  to  the 
human  spirit,  although  by  most  of  us  so  dimly 
perceived.  But  they  have  their  great  compensa- 
tion. It  is  not  necessary  to  explain  once  more 
how  vividly  the  scenes  of  that  poem  reproduce  in 
imagination  the  particular  land  in  which  the  poet 
dwelt,  and  how  perfectly  its  theme  blends  to- 
gether the  legendary  exploits  of  King  Arthur's 
3 


34  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

knights  with  the  poet's  own  religious  experience 
and  with  the  traditions  of  the  church  which  he 
served.  It  is,  indeed,  not  unlikely  that  many 
readers  will  feel  more  at  home  in  these  passing 
but  very  tangible  moods  of  religion  than  in  the 
ethereal  vision  of  Tennyson,  whose  truth  corre- 
sponds to  no  realities  of  outer  hfe.  And  if 
Hawker's  language  lacks  the  pure  and  essential 
beauty  of  Tennyson's,  there  is  nevertheless  a 
certain  fine  sonorousness  in  his  measure,  and 
here  and  there  a  verse  rings  almost  with  the 
gravity  of  Lycidas,  where  Milton  in  like  measure 
bewails  the  degeneracy  of  the  land.  These  may 
be  contingent  qualities  and  may  demand  for  their 
full  enjoyment  a  special  knowledge  of  the  poet's 
life,  but  they  are  genuine  and  have  their  precious 
reward.  I  have  quite  failed  in  this  essay  if  my 
aim  has  not  been  evident  to  spare  the  impatient 
reader  as  much  as  possible  of  this  preliminary 
labour  and  to  shorten  the  way  to  his  journey's 
end. 


FANNY   BURNEY 

I  LiKS  better  to  begin  with  this  English 
maiden  name,  with  its  pleasant  familiarity,  than 
to  adopt  the  stately  Madame  D'Arblay  which 
stands  at  the  head  of  Mr.  Austin  Dobson's  superb 
edition  of  the  Diary  and  Letters.^  For  however 
much  the  form  of  this  minute  self-revelation  may 
remind  us  of  the  famous  French  diaries,  in  sub- 
stance it  is  singularly  English,  and  on  that  qual- 
ity not  a  little  of  its  interest  depends,  as  well  as 
its  very  grave  defects.  There  is,  too,  something 
incongruous  in  the  very  sound  of  a  name  which 
did  not  belong  to  the  writer  until  she  was  forty- 
one.  By  a  kind  of  unconscious  selection  the 
memory  of  our  great  friends  and  mentors  of  the 

^ Diary  and  Letters  of  Madame  D^Arblay  (/77<?-/54o) . 
As  edited  by  her  niece,  Charlotte  Barrett.  With  Preface 
and  Notes  by  Austin  Dobson.  In  six  volumes.  New 
York  :  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1904-05. — This  is  properly  a 
continuation  of  The  Early  Diary  of  Frances  Burney 
{rj68-78),  with  a  Selection  from  her  Correspondence^  atid 
from  the  fournals  of  her  Sisters,  Susan  and  Charlotte 
Burricy.  Edited  by  Annie  Raine  Ellis.  Two  volumes. 
London,  1889.  The  eight  volumes  together  thus  extend 
over  a  period  of  seventy-three  years, 
35 


36  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

past  fixes  itself  at  a  certain  age,  and  it  is  only 
with  an  efibrt  that  we  can  picture  them  to  ourselves 
as  younger  or  older  than  this  arbitrary  image. 
Of  Miss  Burney's  contemporaries,  Johnson  we 
always  see  as  grave  and  wearing  the  years  of 
authority;  can  any  one  honestly  say  the  legend 
of  the  young  poet  and  hack  writer  strolling 
through  Grub  Street  with  a  hungry  friend  has  any 
meaning  to  him?  Walpole  remains  in  the  middle 
years  of  life  with  the  cynicism  on  his  face  that 
comes  when  youth  has  passed  and  the  powers  of 
manhood  still  remain.  But  Fanny  is  a  girl  to 
the  end.  At  the  close  of  her  Journal  we  read  of 
her  as  an  old  woman,  alone  in  her  London  house, 
bending  over  the  mass  of  papers  left  by  her  father 
and  sorting  them  out  with  tired  fingers,  but  the 
story  leaves  us  incredulous.  The  stiffness  of  lan- 
guage which  has  gradually  benumbed  her  style, 
we  take  as  the  pedantry  of  untried  youth,  and 
the  face  of  the  writer  persists  in  wearing  the  mo- 
bile features  so  familiar  in  the  portrait  made  by 
her  artist  cousin.'  The  brow  keeps  its  breadth 
and  smoothness;  the  eyes  still  look  out  with  the 
same  mixture  of  large,  quizzical  humour  and 
near-sighted  abstraction — they  were  "  greenish- 
grey,"  she  says,  like  those  of  a  dove  ;  and  the 
bow  of  the  mouth  is  not  unstrung,  but  arched  as 

'  This  portrait,  known  so  well  from  engravings,  may 
not  be  of  Miss  Burney  after  all.  Though  painted  in  1782, 
when  she  was  thirty  years  old,  it  has  a  marked  appear- 
ance of  youth. 


FANNY  BURNEY  37 

if  holding  back  the  sly,  swift  satire.  She  was  a 
small,  frail  body,  we  know,  and  not  handsome; 
yet  men  felt  a  singular  attraction  in  her,  and 
women  did  not  withhold  their  love,  and  we  who 
read  her  life  cannot  think  of  her  as  anything  but 
winsome  and  unhandseled  by  time. 

It  was,  perhaps,  under  this  impression  of  her 
inherent  youth  that  Mr.  Dobson  has  prefixed  to 
his  volumes  the  quaint  preface  which  Fanny 
wrote  down  at  the  age  of  fifteen,  when  she  had 
made  a  solemn  holocaust  of  her  childish  attempts 
at  literature,  and  was  beginning,  instead,  the 
record  of  her  own  life  : 

To  have  some  account  of  my  thoughts,  manners,  ac- 
quaintance, and  actions,  when  the  hour  arrives  at  which 
time  is  more  nimble  than  memory,  is  the  reason  which 
induces  me  to  keep  a  Journal — a  Journal  in  which,  I 
must  confess,  my  every  thought  must  open  my  whole 
heart. 

But  a  thing  of  the  kind  ought  to  be  addressed  to  some- 
body— I  must  imagine  myself  to  be  talking — talking  to 
the  most  intimate  of  friends — to  one  in  whom  I  should 
take  delight  in  confiding,  and  feel  remorse  in  conceal- 
ment ;  but  who  must  this  friend  be?  To  make  choice  of 
one  in  whom  I  can  but  half  r€\.y,  would  be  to  frustrate 
entirely  the  intention  of  my  plan.  The  only  one  I  could 
wholly,  totally  confide  in,  lives  in  the  same  house  with 
me,  and  not  only  never  has,  but  never  will,  leave  me 
one  secret  to  tell  her.  [Her  "heart's  beloved  sister, 
Susanna,"  we  may  suppose.]  To  whom  then  must  I  dedi- 
cate my  wonderful,  surprising,  and  interesting  adven- 
tures?— to  whom  dare  I  reveal  my  private  opinion  of 
my  nearest  relations  ?   my  secret  thoughts  of  my  dearest 


38  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

friends?  my  own  hopes,  fears,  reflections,  and  dislikes p 
— Nobody, 

To  Nobody,  then,  will  I  write  my  Journal !  since  to 
Nobody  can  I  be  wholly  unreserved,  to  Nobody  can  I 
reveal  every  thought,  every  wish  of  my  heart,  with 
the  most  unlimited  confidence,  the  most  unremitting 
sincerity,  to  the  end  of  my  life !     .     .     . 

And  to  this  genial  confidant  the  early  entries 
were  very  properly  directed.  But  with  the  part 
of  the  Diary  re-edited  by  Mr.  Dobson,  that  begin- 
ning with  the  publication  of  Evelina  in  1778 
and  extending  to  her  death,  comes  a  change 
which  makes  this  preface  no  longer  appropriate, 
except  as  indicating  those  girlish  traits  that  we 
choose  to  associate  with  her  name.  Most  of  the 
record  is  now  addressed  to  Susan  or  to  her  friend, 
Mr.  Crisp,  and  gradually  we  become  aware  that 
she  has  in  mind  the  larger  public  who  some  day 
may  be  curious  about  her  surprising  and  inter- 
esting adventures.  She  was  a  true  prophet  in 
looking  forward  to  the  days  when  time  should 
be  more  nimble  than  memory,  for  in  old  age  she 
read  over  the  record  with  great  care,  blotting  out 
what  might  give  offence  if  printed,  adding  here 
and  there  explanatory  comments,  and  leaving  a 
mass  of  correspondence  for  her  executors  to 
weave  into  the  narrative.  Her  Nobody  develops 
first  into  a  chosen  circle  of  listeners,  and  then 
into  a  public  as  gigantic  as  Polyphemus  himself. 
There  are  thus  three  distinct  elements  in  the 
Diary  whose  intermingling  may  add  not  a  little 


FANNY  BURNEY  39 

to  its  irregular  charm.  Yet  it  is  a  pity,  on  the 
whole,  that  the  thought  of  this  final  audience 
ever  entered  her  brain,  for  it  led  to  a  circum- 
spection and  to  erasures  which  have  probably 
rendered  the  limitations  of  her  mind  unneces- 
sarily obvious. 

But  of  these  it  will  be  suflBcieut  to  speak  later 
on.  Just  now  I  should  like,  if  possible,  to  convey 
to  the  reader  something  of  the  exhilaration  which 
I  have  myself  brought  from  this  renewed  ac- 
quaintance with  so  full  and  sprightly  a  book. 
I  understand,  of  course,  the  diflBculty  of  that  task. 
To  those  who  do  not  already  know  the  Diary 
what  notion  can  be  given  in  a  brief  essay  of  that 
overflowing  story  of  sixty-two  years,  and  to 
those  who  have  read  it  how  dry  and  inadequate 
any  summary  will  seem  !  Yet,  with  the  latter 
class,  at  least,  there  is  a  ground  of  assurance.  It 
is  good  to  recall  in  solitude  the  speech  and  acts 
of  a  dear  friend  ;  it  is  good  also  to  sit  with  one 
who  has  known  him,  and  to  talk  over  his  gener- 
ous ways.  In  that  interchange  of  memories  the 
striking  events  of  his  life  come  out  more  promin- 
ently, and  his  clever  words  tickle  the  ears  again 
as  if  newly  spoken  ;  we  pass  from  one  point  to 
another  of  his  character  as  if,  in  journeying  over 
a  fair  country,  we  were  carried  by  some  seven- 
league  boots  from  hilltop  to  hilltop,  with  no 
care  for  the  humbler  valleys  where  the  prospect 
is  concealed.  Such  a  dialogue,  indeed,  I  should 
wish  these  essays  to  be — a  dialogue  in  which  the 


40  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

reader  plays  an  equal  part  with  the  writer  in 
cherishing  the  memory  of  the  great  moments  and 
persons  of  our  literature. 

And  it  is  on  one  of  these  eminences  of  her 
career  that  we  meet  with  the  subject  of  this  essay 
at  the  opening  of  the  present  Diary.  "  This 
year,"  it  begins,  "was  ushered  in  by  a  grand 
and  most  important  event  !  At  the  latter  end  of 
January  the  literary  world  was  favoured  with  the 
first  publication  of  the  ingenious,  learned,  and 
most  profound  Fanny  Burney  !  I  doubt  not  but 
this  memorable  affair  will,  in  future  times,  mark 
the  period  whence  chronologers  will  date  the 
zenith  of  the  polite  arts  in  this  island!  This 
admirable  authoress  has  named  her  most  elabo- 
rate performance,  Evelina:  or,  a  Young  Lady's  En- 
trance mto  the  World.' ^  Fanny  was  at  this  time 
in  her  twenty-sixth  year,  and  had  already  made 
her  own  entrance  into  the  world  in  a  guarded 
fashion.  She  was  born  at  King's  I,ynn,  in 
1752,  the  second  daughter  and  third  child  of  a 
family  of  eight,  nearly  all  of  whom  in  one  way 
and  another  showed  marked  talent.  The  father, 
Dr.  Charles  Burney,  was  a  busy  and  noted  musi- 
cian, who  was  engaged  in  giving  lessons  among 
the  fashionable  world  from  nine  in  the  morning 
until  nine  at  night,  and  who  still  found  time  to 
write,  with  Fanny's  help  as  amanuensis,  an 
elaborate  History  of  Music,  and  other  minor 
works.  After  various  migrations,  he  had  settled 
down   in   L,ondon   at    No.   i  St.  Martin's  Street, 


FANNY  BURNEY  4  I 

attracted  thither,  it  seems,  by  the  fact  that  the 
house  had  once  been  the  residence  of  Isaac  New- 
ton, and  still  showed  on  the  roof  a  small,  wooden 
tower,  with  leaden  roof  and  diminutive  fireplace, 
which  was  supposed  to  have  served  the  great 
astronomer  as  observatory.  Dr.  Burney  himself 
never  used  the  closet  for  star-gazing,  although 
he  was  a  devoted  student  of  that  science,  and 
even  wrote  a  learned  poem  thereupon.  It  seems 
to  have  been  left  by  common  consent  to  Fanny 
for  a  retreat,  where,  like  a  very  amiable  and  very 
feminine  Teufelsdrockh,  she  might  lift  herself 
above  the  world,  and  indulge  unmolested  in  the 
incorrigible  family  propensity  for  scribbling. 

And  it  is  well  for  us  that  such  a  place  of  retire- 
ment was  allowed  her,  for  in  the  hubbub  below 
stairs  she  would  have  found  it  as  hard  to  conduct 
her  journals  as  Clarissa  or  any  other  badgered 
heroine  of  the  age.  Besides  the  troop  of  brothers 
and  sisters,  there  was  a  stream  of  company  pass- 
ing through  the  lower  rooms.  Hither  came 
Garrick,  the  irrepressible,  turning  the  stairs  and 
chambers  of  the  house  into  a  Drury  Lane  with 
his  droll  mimicry;  famous  singers,  the  wonderful 
Agujari  and  others,  sang  here  before  titled  and 
untitled  guests,  before  gay  fops  and  grave  gentle- 
men ;  Count  OrlofiF  blazed  here  in  all  the  splendour 
of  his  jewels,  and  kindly  displayed  to  the  inquisi- 
tive ladies  the  portrait  of  the  imperial  mistress 
whom  he  was  reputed  to  have  served  too  well ; 
Bruce,  the  Abyssinian  King,  threatened  the  ceil- 


42  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

ings  with  his  gigantic  stature;  Omai,  the  South 
Sea  Islander,  here  made  his  "remarkable  good 
bows,"  clad,  unfortunately,  in  merely  Ejiglish 
velvet,  but,  fortunately,  not  in  his  Otaheite  gar- 
ments, which  would  have  been,  says  the  diarist 
naively,  "  in  every  respect  improper  for  Bug- 
land";  and  by  his  side  Hawkesworth  might  be 
heard  uttering  solemn  platitudes  in  book  lan- 
guage, amid  the  chattering  platitudes  of  less 
pretentious  talkers — altogether  a  motley  society 
that  gathered  about  the  celebrated  musician  and 
his  clever  daughters.  As  for  Fanny,  the  least 
promising  of  the  flock,  she  sat  demurely  and 
watched  it  all,  saying  little,  but  launching  now 
and  then  just  the  right  word,  and  seeing  little 
with  her  near-sighted  eyes  (indeed,  all  her  writ- 
ing is  singularly  lacking  in  visual  description), 
but  somehow  fixing  in  her  mind  the  peculiarity 
and  whimsical  trait  of  every  guest.  That,  with 
the  more  bourgeois  connections  of  which  less  is 
said,  gave  suflScient  preparation  for  writing  a 
novel  which  was  to  keep  Burke  from  his  bed  all 
night,  was  to  captivate  Dr.  Johnson,  and  take 
London  society  by  storm. 

In  some  ways  the  first  chapters  of  the  Diary, 
in  which  the  subject  of  Evelina  predominates, 
are  the  most  entertaining  of  all.  The  author's 
transitions  from  modesty  to  innocent  vanity,  her 
freshness  and  vivacity,  make  the  record  read 
like  the  scenes  of  a  fine  comedy.  Though  the 
book  was  dedicated  to  her  father,  he  was  one  of 


FANNY    BURNEY  43 

the  last  to  discover  its  authorship,  and  from  his 
lips  the  knowledge  passed  to  "  Daddy"  Crisp, 
her  mentor  and  friend  of  Chessington,  than 
whom  no  more  tantalising  figure  exists  in  Eng- 
lish letters: 

Sunday  evening  as  I  was  going  into  my  father's  room, 
I  heard  him  say:  "The  variety  of  the  characters — the 
variety  of  the  scenes — and  the  language — why,  she  has 
had  very  little  education,  but  what  she  has  given  herself, 
— less  than  any  of  the  others  !  "  and  Mr.  Crisp  exclaimed, 
"  Wonderful — it 's  wonderful  !  " 

I  now  found  what  was  going  forward,  and  therefore 
deemed  it  most  fitting  to  decamp. 

About  an  hour  after,  as  I  was  passing  through  the  hall, 
I  met  my  daddy  (Crisp).  His  face  was  all  animation  and 
archness  ;  he  doubled  his  fist  at  me,  and  would  have 
stopped  me,  but  I  ran  past  him  into  the  parlour. 

Before  supper,  however,  I  again  met  him,  and  he 
would  not  suflFer  me  to  escape  ;  he  caught  both  my  hands, 
and  looked  as  if  he  would  have  looked  me  through,  and 
then  exclaimed,  "  Why,  you  little  hussy, — you  young 
devil!  An't  you  ashamed  to  look  me  in  the  face,  you 
Evelina,  you !  Why,  what  a  dance  you  have  led  me, 
about  It !  Young  friend,  indeed  !  Oh,  you  little  hussy, 
what  tricks  have  you  served  me  !  " 

And  then  comes  the  visit  to  Streatham,  the 
residence  of  Mr.  Thrale,  the  brewer,  and  his  wife, 
where  Dr.  Johnson  made  himself  so  thoroughly 
at  home  that  nearly  a  century  later  the  ink  spots 
might  be  seen  which  he  had  dabbled  over  the 
floor  and  walls  of  his  two  rooms.  The  burly, 
melancholy,  tender-hearted  dictator  forms,  so  to 
speak,  the  chorus  of  all  these  early  chapters.     No 


44  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

wonder  that  his  approbation  almost  crazed  Fanny 
with  agreeable  surprise,  so  she  says,  and  gave 
her  such  a  flight  of  spirits  that  she  danced  a  jig 
to  Mr.  Crisp,  without  any  preparation,  music,  or 
explanation — to  that  good  man's  no  small  amaze- 
ment and  diversion.  Forty-eight  years  afterward 
she  still  remembered  the  escapade  and  told  Sir 
Walter  Scott  that  the  scene  of  it  was  a  mulberry 
tree  in  the  garden  at  Chessington— happy  Sir 
Walter,  twice  happy  Mr.  Crisp  !  She  no  sooner 
reaches  Streatham  than  Mrs.  Thrale  takes  her 
into  the  library  and  tells  her  how  they  had  dis- 
cussed the  book  at  supper  the  day  before,  and 
how  Dr.  Johnson  had  declared  "  Mr.  Smith"  his 
favourite  character,  and  had  acted  him  all  even- 
ing, had  even  repeated  whole  scenes  by  heart. 
At  dinner  she  sees  the  great  man  himself,  and 
speaks  of  his  cruel  infirmities  with  reverence. 
He  sits  by  her,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  dinner 
asks  Mrs.  Thrale  what  is  in  some  little  pies  near 
him  : 

"Mutton,"  answered  she,  "sol  don't  ask  you  to  eat 
any,  because  I  know  you  despise  it." 

"No,  madam,  no,"  cried  he  ;  "I  despise  nothing  that 
is  good  of  its  sort ;  but  I  am  too  proud  now  to  eat  of  it. 
Sitting  by  Miss  Burnej-  makes  me  very  proud  to-day  ! " 

"Miss  Burney,"  said  Mrs.  Thrale,  laughing,  "you 
must  take  great  care  of  your  heart  if  Dr.  Johnson  attacks 
it ;  for  I  assure  you  he  is  not  often  successless." 

Dr.   Johnson's   manner   of  flirting   was   a   little 
heavy,  perhaps,  but  it  was   certainly  flattering. 


FANNY    BURNEY  45 

He  mixed  the  real  world  and  the  world  of  Eve- 
lina up  in  a  way  that  must  have  turned  the 
author's  head,  and  few  of  the  many  passing 
guests  escaped  without  suflFering  some  humorous 
comparison  with  the  Branghtons,  or  Mme.  Duval, 
or  M.  Dubois. 

One  of  the  benefits  derived  from  this  acquaint- 
ance with  the  Thrales  was  the  opportunity  it 
gave  Fanny  to  travel  and  pick  up  odd  characters 
for  enlarging  the  scope  of  her  satire.  Brighton 
was  particularly  rich  in  these  eccentricities,  and 
not   the  least  of  them   was   a   certain    General 

B y,    with   his  egregious  vanity,  his   absurd 

set  speeches,  his  violent  antipathy  to  physicians 
("those  Gallipot  fellows!")  and  his  quickly 
spent  pedantry.  For  neatness  in  genre  painting 
not  many  scenes  in  the  Diary  can  surpass  this  ; 
it  reads  like  a  page  of  Crabbe  set  in  prose  : 

Mr.  Hamilton,  Mr.  Selwyn,  Mr.  Tidy,  and  Mr.  Thrale 
seated  themselves  to  whist ;  the  rest  looked  on  :  but  the 
General,  as  he  always  does,  took  up  the  newspaper,  and, 
with  various  comments,  made  aloud,  as  he  went  on  read- 
ing to  himself,  diverted  the  whole  company.  Now  he 
would  cry,  "Strange  !  strange  that ! " — presently,  "What 
stuff!  I  don't  believe  a  word  of  it ! " — a  little  after,  "Oh, 
Mr.  Bate,  I  wish  your  ears  were  cropped  !  " — then,  "  Ha  ! 
ha  !  ha  !  funnibus  !  funnibus  !  indeed  !  " — and,  at  last,  in 
a  great  rage,  he  exclaimed,  "What  a  fellow  is  this,  to 
presume  to  arraign  the  conduct  of  persons  of  quality  !  " 

Having  diverted  himself  and  us  in  this  manner,  till  he 
had  read  every  column  methodically  through,  he  began 
all  over  again,  and  presently  called  out,  "  Ha !  ha  !  here  's 


46  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

a  pretty  thing ! "  and  then,  in  a  plaintive  voice,  lan- 
guished out  some  wretched  verses.     . 

A  few  minutes  after  he  began  puffing  and  blowing, 
with  rising  indignation,  and,  at  last,  cried  out,  "  What  a 
fellow  is  this  !  I  should  not  be  at  all  surprised  if  General 
Burgoyne  cut  off  both  his  ears  !  " 

"You  have  great  variety  there,"  cried  Mr.  Hamilton 

drily;     "but   I   think,    Mr.    B y,    you   have   read  us 

nothing  to-day  about  the  analeptic  pills  !  " 

Though  we  all  smiled  at  this,  the  General,  unconscious 
of  any  joke,  gravely  answered, 

"No,  sir!  I  have  not  seen  them  yet,  but  I  dare  say  I 
shall  find  them  by  and  by  !  " 

And,  by  the  time  the  next  game  was  finished,  he  called 
out,  "No!  I  see  nothing  of  the  analeptic  pills  to-day  ; 
but  here  's  some  Samaritan  drops  !  " 

Naturally,  with  her  growing  fame  and  her 
intimacy  at  Streatham,  other  friends  of  the  great 
world  were  added  to  Miss  Burney's  circle.  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds  welcomed  her  to  his  studio,  and 
Edmund  Burke  paid  deference  to  her  genius.  The 
proud,  the  awful  Mrs.  Montagu  invited  her  to 
that  monstrous  house-warming  at  Portman 
Square.  "  Down  with  her,  Burney  I  "  cried  the 
Doctor,  and  we  bless  him  for  his  brusquery  ; 
"  down  with  her  I — spare  her  not  I — attack  her, 
fight  her,  and  down  with  her  at  once!  You  are 
a  rising  wit,  and  she  is  at  the  top  ;  and  when  I 
was  beginning  the  world,  and  was  nothing  and 
nobody,  the  joy  of  my  life  was  to  fire  at  all  the 
established  wits  I  and  then  everybody  loved  to 
halloo  me  on." 

Yet  with  the  increase  of  friends  came  a  loss. 


FANNY  BURNEY  47 

Mr.  Crisp  passes  away  at  Chessington.  "  God 
bless  and  restore  you,  my  most  dear  daddy  !  " 
she  had  written  to  him  in  his  illness  ;  but — it  is 
the  old  lesson — dis  alitcr  visum.  She  flew  to  his 
bedside  and  was  there  to  nurse  him  through  his 
agony  ;  and  then  comes  a  pathetic  break  in  the 
Diary,  and  her  busy  pen  for  awhile  is  silent. 
There  is  nothing  in  the  years  that  follow  which 
quite  takes  the  place  of  this  genial,  quizzical, 
grumbling,  lonely  figure,  nothing  quite  like  it 
elsewhere  in  our  literary  annals.  Macaulay,  in 
his  essay  on  Madame  D'Arblay,  has  used  his 
name  to  point  a  moral  and  to  distort,  if  not  adorn, 
a  tale.  He  had  once  written  a  tragedy,  a  dull 
tragedy,  which  had  failed,  or  only  partially  suc- 
ceeded, on  the  stage,  and  chiefly  for  pecuniary 
reasons,  he  had  thereupon  gone  to  dwell  in  a 
country  boarding-house.  To  Macaulay  he  was 
accordingly  "  a  cynic  and  a  hater  of  mankind," 
who  had  retired  to  an  old  hall  in  one  of  the  most 
desolate  tracts  of  Surrey,  to  hide  himself  "  like  a 
wild  beast  in  a  den."  The  picture  is  grotesquely 
exaggerated  and  does  wrong  to  a  disappointed 
but  most  loving  spirit. 

There  is  a  lapse  of  two  months  in  the  Diary,  as 
I  said,  and  the  succeeding  entry  is  ominous  : 
"  We  heard  to-day  that  Dr.  Johnson  had  been 
taken  ill,  in  a  way  that  gave  a  dreadful  shock 
to  himself,  and  a  most  anxious  alarm  to  his 
friends."  That  was  in  June  of  1783;  he  died 
at  the   close  of  1784.     Boswell's  story   of  those 


48  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

melancholy  days  of  decay  is  well  known,  but  I 
think  there  is  nothing  in  Boswell  so  beautiful  as 
this  account  in  Fanny's  Diary  of  the  visit  of  her 
father  and  herself  to  Bolt  Court : 

"  I  hope,"  he  said,  "Fanny  did  not  take  it  amiss  that 
I  did  not  see  her?  I  was  very  bad  !  " 

Amiss ! — what  a  word !  Oh  that  I  had  been  present 
to  have  answered  it !  My  father  stayed,  I  suppose,  half 
an  hour,  and  then  was  coming  away.  He  again  took  his 
hand,  and  encouraged  him  to  come  again  to  him  ;  and 
when  he  was  taking  leave,  said — "Tell  Fanny  to  pray  for 
me!" 

Ah  !  dear  Dr.  Johnson  !  might  I  but  have  your  prayers! 
After  which,  still  grasping  his  hand,  he  made  a  prayer 
for  himself, — the  most  fervent,  pious,  humble,  eloquent, 
and  touching,  my  father  says,  that  ever  was  composed. 
.  .  .  And  again,  when  my  father  was  leaving  him,  he 
brightened  up,  something  of  his  arch  look  returned, 
and  he  said — "  I  think  I  shall  throw  the  ball  at  Fanny 
yet!" 

There  is  a  word  yet  to  be  written  about  the 
prayers  and  meditations  of  that  great  soul,  about 
his  humility  before  God  and  his  pride  before 
men  ;  and  he  who  writes  of  the  matter  cannot 
well  fail  to  bear  in  mind  that  childlike  appeal, 
"  Tell  Fanny  to  pray  for  me." 

But  half  our  time  is  already  gone  and  we  have 
not  yet  reached  that  great  episode  in  Miss  Bur- 
ney's  life,  her  appointment  to  be  Keeper  of  the 
Robes  to  Queen  Charlotte,  under  the  command 
of  Madame  Schwellenberg.  I  confess  myself  in 
accord   with    Macaulay    rather   than    with   later 


FANNY  BURNEY  49 

writers  in  regard  to  this  period,  and  only  his 
trenchant  rhetoric  can  well  describe  the  servitude 
and  vulgarity  of  existence  in  George  the  Third's 
court — Macaulay's  rhetoric  or  Rochefoucauld's 
wit:  Les  grands  noms  abaissent  au  lieu  (V  el  ever 
ceux  qui  ne  les  savent  pas  soiitenir.  Fanny  took 
up  the  role  against  her  better  judgment  and  only 
to  serve  her  father' s  interests.  "  If  to  you  alone, ' ' 
she  writes,  "  I  show  myself  in  these  dark  colours, 
can  you  blame  the  plan  that  I  have  intentionally 
been  forming — namely,  to  wean  myself  from  my- 
self— to  lessen  all  my  affections — to  curb  all  my 
wishes — to  deaden  all  my  sensations  ?  This  de- 
sign, my  dear  Susan,  I  formed  so  long  ago  as 
the  first  day  my  dear  father  accepted  my  offered 
appointment."  She  was  herself  in  many  respects 
singularly  unfitted  for  the  place  ;  her  near-sight- 
edness kept  her  in  constant  dread  of  not  recog- 
nising some  royalty,  her  bashfulness  and  lack  of 
orderliness  made  her  constantly  uneasy  while 
serving  the  Queen,  and  her  health  suffered  miser- 
ably from  hours  of  standing  and  from  running 
through  draughty  halls.  It  is  to  her  credit  that 
she  won  the  affection  of  the  Queen  and  the 
abounding  love  (such  a  word  would  be  shocking 
if  applied  to  her  Majesty)  of  the  Princesses. 
There  are  minds  so  shallow  that  a  few  creeping 
virtues  exhaust  the  soil  and  leave  no  nourish- 
ment for  the  flowers  of  fancy  or  the  weeds  of  vice. 
Charlotte  was  of  that  type,  and  to  find  any  par- 
allel for  her  court,  with  its  petty  formalism, 
4 


50  SHELLURNE    ESSAYS 

narrowness  of  view,  and  rigid  conceit,  one  must 
go  to  the  German  principalities  of  the  time,  from 
which,  indeed,  her  manners  sprung.  A  breath 
of  scandal,  a  suspicion  of  some  real  human  pas- 
sion, would  be  welcomed  as  a  relief  in  her 
waiting- woman's  annals.  We  wish  that  the 
wicked  Wales  might  have  wreaked  his  corrup- 
tion at  Windsor  or  Kew,  instead  of  in  his  own 
haunts,  and  we  are  only  shocked  with  pleasure 
when  Fanny  describes  the  reckless  young  Clar- 
ence making  the  gentlemen  in  waiting  tipsy 
under  the  very  glare  of  Mme.  Schwellenberg's 
eyes. 

L,uckily,  the  Queen  had  a  kindly,  even  a  senti- 
mental, heart,  but  no  such  weakness  seasoned  the 
coarse  manners  and  scolding  temper  of  Fanny's 
immediate  superior.  At  least  it  was  retained  for 
her  pet  frogs  whose  "  recreative  and  dulcet  croak- 
ing "  threw  her  into  ecstasies  of  delight.  Fanny 
seems  to  have  loathed  those  cold  creatures  with  a 
rancorous  hatred,  and  alludes  to  them  more  than 
once : 

What  a  stare  was  drawn  from  our  new  equerry  the  fol- 
lowing evening,  by  Major  Price's  gravely  asking  Mrs^ 
Schwellenberg  after  the  health  of  her  Frogs  !  She  an- 
swered they  were  very  well,  and  the  Major  said,  "You 
must  know.  Colonel  Gwynn,  Mrs.  Schwellenberg  keeps  a 
pair  of  Frogs." 

"  Of  Frogs  ? — pray  what  do  they  feed  upon  ?  " 

"  Flies,  sir,"  she  answered. 

"And  pray,  ma'am,  what  food  have  they  in  winter?" 

"Nothing  other." 


FANNY  BURNEY  5I 

The  stare  was  now  still  wider. 

"  But  I  can  make  them  croak  when  I  will,"  she  added  J 
"  when  I  only  go  so  to  my  snuff-box,  knock,  knock, 
knock,  they  croak  all  what  I  please." 

"Very  pretty,  indeed!"  exclaimed  Colonel  Golds- 
worthy. 

"  I  thought  to  have  some  spawn,"  she  continued  ;  "but 
Lady  Maria  Carlton,  what  you  call  Lady  Doncaster,  came 
and  frightened  them  ;  I  was  never  so  angry  !  " 

"  I  am  sorry  for  that,"  cried  the  Major,  very  seriously, 
"  for  else  I  should  have  begged  a  pair." 

"So  you  meant,  ma'am,  to  have  had  a  breed  of  them," 
cried  Colonel  Goldsworthy ;  "a  breed  of  young  frogs? 
Vastly  clever  indeed  !  " 

Then  followed  a  formal  enumeration  of  their  virtues 
and  endearing  little  qualities,  which  made  all  laugh 
except  the  new  equerry,  who  sat  in  perfect  amaze. 

The  life  of  a  sensitive  woman  under  the  despi- 
cable tyranny  of  a  creature  like  this  could  have 
been  nothing  less  than  a  continuous  torment. 

Of  course,  there  were  alleviations.  Some  of  the 
gentlemen  and  ladies  of  the  palace  amused  and 
others  pleased  her,  and  of  all  she  has  left  a  series 
of  vignettes  drawn  with  extraordinary  precision 
and  not  without  a  touch  of  relieving  malice. 
There  was  the  Rev.  C.  de  Guiffardiere,  French 
reader  to  the  Queen  and  Princesses,  whom  she 
always  calls  "  Mr.  Turbulent,"  and  whose  bois- 
terous, if  innocent,  love-making  kept  her  in  a 
state  of  alarm  which  at  least  precluded  ennui. 
As  an  offset  there  was  Col.  Digby  (the  "  Mr. 
Fairly"  of  the  Diary),  as  polite  and  melting  as 
the  other  was  exasperating,  who  talked  with  her 


52  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

of  his  melancholy  and  read  to  her  from  the  poets. 
He  could  even  suck  sentiment  from  Falconer's 
Shipivrcck  as  Fanny  romantically  records  : 
"One  line  he  came  to,  that  he  read  with  an  emo- 
tion extremely  affecting.     'Tis  a  sweet  line — 

He  felt  the  chastity  of  silent  woe. 

He  stopped  upon  it,  and  sighed  so  deeply  that  his 
sadness  quite  infected  me."  Mr.  Fairly  was  a 
widower,  and  for  awhile  it  looks  as  if  Fanny 
would  be  asked  to  console  his  chaste  woe,  but  he 
basely  and  clandestinely  married  another  woman. 
Nor  were  adventures  of  a  larger  sort  lacking. 
The  journey  of  the  court  to  Oxford  is  filled  with 
interesting  details,  and  the  experience  of  the 
maids  of  honour  at  Nuneham,  Lord  Harcourt's 
place  near  by,  their  wandering  through  empty 
halls  and  questionable  chambers,  can  only  be 
paralleled  by  the  story  of  Wilhelm  Meister's 
troupe  at  the  castle  of  the  duke.  More  absorbing 
still,  not  without  an  undertone  of  genuine  awe, 
is  the  recital  of  the  King's  illness.  She  touches 
lightly  on  the  raving  of  her  royal  master,  and  on 
the  brutal  treatment  he  underwent,  as  was  the 
custom  in  those  days  with  the  insane.  It  was 
her  duty  each  morning  to  transmit  the  pages'  re- 
port of  the  night  to  the  afflicted  Queen,  and  once 
to  report  those  horrors  was  enough.  The  dark 
event  goes  on  behind  closed  doors,  but  it  only 
gains  in  power,  as  in  the  Greek  tragedy,  from 
such  a  repression  : 


FANNY  BURNEY  53 

If  this  beginning  of  the  night  was  affecting,  she  writes, 
what  did  it  not  grow  afterwards !  Two  long  hours 
I  waited— alone,  in  silence,  in  ignorance,  in  dread  !  I 
thought  they  would  never  be  over  ;  at  twelve  o'clock  I 
seemed  to  have  spent  two  whole  days  in  waiting,  I  then 
opened  my  door,  to  listen,  in  the  passage,  if  anything 
seemed  stirring.  Not  a  sound  could  I  hear.  My  apart- 
ment seemed  wholly  separated  from  life  and  motion. 
Whoever  was  in  the  house  kept  at  the  other  eud,  and  not 
even  a  servant  crossed  the  stairs  or  passage  by  my  rooms. 

I  would  fain  have  crept  on  myself,  anywhere  in  the 
world,  for  some  inquiry,  or  to  see  but  a  face,  and  hear  a 
voice,  but  I  did  not  dare  risk  losing  a  sudden  summons. 

I  re-entered  my  room  and  there  passed  another  endless 
hour,  in  conjectures  too  horrible  to  relate. 

A  little  after  one,  I  heard  a  step— my  door  opened — 
and  a  page  said  I  must  come  to  the  Queen. 

I  could  hardly  get  along— hardly  force  myself  into  the 
room  ;  dizzy  I  felt,  almost  to  falling.     .     .     . 

My  poor  Royal  Mistress  !  never  can  I  forget  her  coun- 
tenance—pale, ghastly  pale  she  looked  ;  she  was  seated 
to  be  undressed,  and  attended  by  Lady  Elizabeth  Walde- 
grave  and  Miss  Goldsworthy  ;  her  whole  frame  was  dis- 
ordered, yet  she  was  still  and  quiet. 

Strange  abode  of  royalty,  which  only  the  en- 
trance of  madness  can  strip  of  its  deluded  self- 
complaisance  and  raise  to  dignity.  One  compares 
the  fatuous  dulness  of  Windsor  and  Kew  with 
the  keen  and  passionate  life  that  throbbed 
through  Versailles  and  is  reflected  in  a  hundred 
French  memoirs.  "  I  think  it  owing  to  the  good 
sense  of  the  English  that  they  have  not  painted 
better,"  said  Hogarth  once  to  Horace  Walpole, 


54  SHELBURN£   ESSAYS 

and  sometimes  one  is  led  to  question  whether 
good  sense  is  not  held  after  all  at  too  high  a  price. 
It  would  be  a  pretty  piece  of  analysis  to  compare 
it  with  the  bon  sejis  so  extolled  by  Boileau. 

It  is  but  fair  to  add  that  the  limitations  of  Miss 
Burney's  own  mind  throw  the  narrowness  of  the 
court  into  undue  prominence.  Of  the  political 
activities  which  centred  around  George  III.  and 
which  were  the  only  real  life  of  the  court,  as, 
indeed,  they  were  of  England  at  that  time,  she 
has  not  a  word  to  say.  There  is  just  a  glimpse 
of  the  intrigues  to  set  the  Prince  of  Wales  as 
regent  over  the  poor  mad  King,  but  not  even  a 
hint  of  the  larger  movements  that  were  converting 
England  from  a  kingdom  to  an  empire,  and 
changing  its  government  from  an  oligarchy  to  a 
democrac}'-.  Those  last  years  of  the  eighteenth 
century  were  big  with  importance  from  that  side, 
and  sometimes  the  blindness  of  Miss  Burney  to  all 
but  the  small  personalities  of  the  palace  is  more 
than  annoying.  Even  at  the  trial  of  Warren 
Hastings,  which  she  heard  from  the  most  advan- 
tageous position,  she  displays  the  same  obtuseness 
of  mind.  Her  account  of  that  scene  as  a  piece  of 
large  pictorial  writing  is  extraordinary,  but  her 
sympathy  and  her  understanding  are  confined 
solely  to  the  persons  involved.  No  suspicion 
seems  to  have  entered  her  mind  that  this  gorgeous 
drama  represents  a  change  in  the  conduct  of  an 
empire;  she  is  merely  incensed  against  Burke 
because  he  is  in  opposition  to  her  beloved  master; 


FANNY  BURNEY  55 

her  judgment  does  not  extend  beyond  pity  for  an 
accused  friend.  Yet  in  a  way  she  occasionally 
exhibits  unusual  shrewdness.  Her  comments  to 
Mr.  Windham  on  the  failure  of  Burke's  eloquence 
is  a  notable  piece  of  literary  criticism — the  only 
criticism  in  the  whole  Diary,  I  believe,  which  is 
not  a  mere  repetition  of  the  faded  platitudes  of 
the  day. 

Failing  health  at  last  forced  her  to  surrender 
her  place  ;  she  took  with  her  the  blessing  of  the 
Queen  and  a  pension  of  ;^ioo,  for  both  of  which 
she  was  overpowered  with  gratitude.  For  a 
while  she  was  unsettled,  but  a  visit  to  her  sister 
Susan,  now  Mrs.  Phillips,  at  Mickleham,  Surrey, 
brought  a  new  influence  into  her  life.  Within 
walking  distance  of  the  place  was  Juniper  Hall, 
an  old  ale-house  which  had  been  remodelled  and 
let  to  a  colony  of  French  emigres.  The  company 
was  certainly  distinguished,  including  the  Mar- 
quise de  la  Chitre,  the  Comte  de  Narbonne,  the 
Due  de  Montmorency,  and  the  Due  de  Liancourt. 
Talleyrand,  too,  was  there  for  a  time,  and  Ma- 
dame de  Stael,  and,  most  fatal  of  all  for  Fanny, 
a  certain  M.  Alexandre  D'Arblay,  a  former 
marechal  de  camp  and  adjutant-general  to  La 
Faj'ette,  "  a  true  inilitaire  f^-anc  et  loyal,'"  as  Mrs. 
Phillips  described  him.  There  is  nothing  extraor- 
dinary in  Fanny's  marriage  to  this  gentleman, 
and  the  surprise  that  used  to  be  expressed  over  it 
was  merely  the  outcome  of  insular  prejudice. 
The  fact  is  that  Fanny  was  immediately  and  very 


56  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

naturally  attracted  by  the  simple  manners,  the 
absence  of  snobbery,  and  the  gay  philosophy  of 
these  exiles.  It  must  be  remembered  that  her 
day  fell  in  the  dregs  of  English  social  life,  in 
what  might  be  called  a  kind  of  interregnum  be- 
tween two  different  worlds.  Literature  was  dead 
and  only  a  stale  echo  of  it  remained  among  the 
bluestocking  coteries.  Wit  was  fast  degenerat- 
ing into  sentimentality.  The  peculiar  virility  and 
large  insolence  of  the  early  eighteenth  century 
had  passed  away,  while  the  new  society  was 
yet  to  be  born.  The  men  of  the  age  just  gone 
had  been  originals,  with  plenty  of  sins  and  crud- 
ities to  answer  for;  but  their  originality  (I 
use  the  word  in  its  old  sense)  had  been  one 
of  character,  whereas  the  younger  generation 
were  original  only  in  manners.  The  difference 
is  felt  strongly  if  one  turns  from  the  satire  of 
To77i  Jones  and  Roderick  Random  to  that  of 
Evelina  and  Cecilia,  and  it  is  shown  equally 
in  the  transcripts  of  real  life.  The  coarse 
humours  of  the  men  in  Walpole's  letters  seem 
to  be  the  ebullience  o^  some  unused  and  un- 
tamed inner  strength ;  in  comparison  with 
them  the  eccentricities  of  Miss  Burne3^'s  circle 
have  the  appearance  of  mere  whim  and  sentiment, 
or  of  callous  insensibility.  We  catch  this  note  of 
the  day  in  a  thousand  places.  Miss  Monckton  at 
her  grand  assembly  rushes  about  to  disarrange 
the  chairs  and  break  up  a  circle  ;  in  the  middle 
of  the  evening    Lady    Gal  way   trots    from   her 


FANNY  BURNEY  57 

corner,  leans  her  hands  on  the  back  of  two  chairs, 
thrusts  her  httle  round  head  through  two  fine 
high-dressed  ladies  to  peep  at  Fanny,  and  trots 
back  to  her  corner.  The  Duke  of  Devonshire 
lolls  back  so  as  to  throw  down  a  lustre.  "  I 
wonder  how  I  did  that,"  says  he  coolly  ;  walks 
to  another  side  of  the  room,  pulls  down  a  second 
lustre,  and  strolls  away  with  a  "  This  is  singular 
enough  !  "  These  are  but  little  things,  but  they 
show  the  kind  of  society  in  which  Fanny  lived, 
and  they  explain  why  she  was  so  readily  capti- 
vated by  the  quiet  refinement  of  Juniper  Hall. 

The  marriage  with  M.  D'Arblay  was  not  long 
deferred,  and  for  a  while  we  have  a  pretty  idyl  of 
domestic  life  in  a  little  cottage  built  on  the  pro- 
ceeds from  a  third  novel,  and  supported  by 
Fanny's  scanty  pension.  From  this  there  is  an 
abrupt  transition  to  the  intrigues  of  Napoleon's 
court,  the  excitement  of  the  Restoration,  the 
confusion  of  the  Hundred  Days,  the  suspense  at 
Brussels  during  the  battle  of  Waterloo,  from 
which  Thackeray  drew  his  famous  scene  in 
Vajiity  Fair,  and  the  second  Restoration.  The 
interest  never  flags  in  these  chapters,  and  it 
would  not  be  easy  to  find  elsewhere  a  more  vivid 
description  of  the  perturbations  and  blind  cur- 
rents of  fear  that  lay  hold  of  the  individual  dur- 
ing these  great  national  catastrophes.  One  feels 
the  general  paralysis  of  lesser  life,  while  some- 
where in  the  background  dark  and  stupendous 
powers  are  wrestling  for  the  mastery. 


58  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

In  England,  again,  the  interest  gradually 
wanes  to  the  close  of  the  writer's  life.  Yet  there 
are  passages  of  this  later  record  which  display, 
perhaps,  more  literary  skill  of  the  conscious  sort 
than  any  of  the  earlier  parts.  The  adventure  at 
Ilfracombe,  for  example,  is  told  with  an  art  at 
once  realistic  and  imaginative,  and  the  tale  of  her 
husband's  death  has  over  it  a  quiet  and  ineffable 
pathos.  Macaulay  has  written  harshly  of  the 
petrified  style  adopted  by  Mme.  D'Arblay  in  her 
declining  years.  The  censure  is  deserved,  no 
doubt ;  and  yet  for  sheer  beauty  of  words  she 
never  wrote  anything  comparable  to  this  expres- 
sion of  her  feelings  when  she  heard  that  the 
long-delayed  end  had  fallen  :  "  How  I  bore  this 
is  still  marvellous  to  me  !  I  had  always  believed 
such  a  sentence  would  at  once  have  killed  me. 
But  his  sight — the  sight  of  his  stillness,  kept  me 
from  distraction  !  Sacred  he  appeared,  and  his 
stillness  I  thought  should  be  ini?ie,  and  be  inviol- 
able." There  were  twenty-one  ^-ears  of  memory 
yet  before  her,  and  her  own  release  did  not  come 
until  the  extreme  age  of  eighty-eight. 

A  "little  character-monger"  Johnson  had 
called  her  in  her  youth,  and  no  phrase  can  better 
describe  the  trait  which  lends  interest  to  this  long 
Diary.  Nowhere  else  in  English  will  you  find 
anything  just  like  this  series  of  portraits,  in 
which  the  eccentricities  and  mannerisms  of  the 
age  are  caught  up  with  so  unerring  a  ficlelity  and 
so  gentle  a  malice.     In  this  respect,  the  two  of 


FANNV  BURNEY  59 

her  novels  which  still  live,  Evelina  and  Cecilia , 
are  properly  mere  excursions  in  the  more 
realistic  transcript  of  life.  Occasionally,  to  be 
sure,  there  is  a  passage  of  capital  narration,  but 
it  is  always  of  a  purely  personal  sort.  What  we 
miss  in  the  Diary  and  the  novels  alike  is  any 
note  of  passion  and  any  immediate  reflection  on 
life,  and  only  this  limitation  prevents  her  work 
from  ranking  with  the  great  French  autobio- 
graphies, with  which  a  comparison  most  naturally 
occurs.  Fanny  was  a  prude,  we  are  told,  and 
she  was  also,  I  fear,  something  of  a  snob,  but  the 
fault  did  not  lie  entirely  in  her  own  character. 
Not  a  little  of  it  must  be  charged  to  the  state 
of  English  society.  The  fact  is,  she  was  a  victim 
of  that  peculiarly  British  worship  of  the  social 
order  which  from  the  days  of  Hobbes  had  been 
slowly  permeating  the  national  consciousness. 
That  worship  was  not  incompatible  with  sound 
statesmanship,  or  with  profound  political  philo- 
sophy as  in  the  case  of  Burke  ;  it  did  not  lessen 
the  manly  independence  of  a  Johnson,  and  it 
could  serve  to  whet  the  barbed  arrows  of  a  Wal- 
pole.  But  on  a  yielding,  feminine  character  such 
as  Miss  Burney's  its  influence  was  almost  omni- 
potent, so  that  her  prudishness  and  her  snobbery 
became  not  so  much  individual  as  national ;  and 
the)'-  are,  one  must  admit,  none  the  less  easy  to 
stomach  for  that  reason.  There  was  an  actual 
dead  line  for  her  mind.  Custom  laj'  like  a  crust 
between  what  was  proper  and  what  was  unspeak- 


6o  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

able.  Above  were  the  famil}'-,  the  State,  the 
Church,  the  social  order  ;  below  were  gathered 
all  the  ruinous  emotions  of  the  untamed  heart,  not 
the  immoral  or  indecent  things,  merely,  for  these, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  might  be  harmless  among 
gentlemen,  but  the  passionate,  rebellious  things 
that  create  their  own  law.  Richardson  had  been 
able  to  show  the  working  of  that  seething  under- 
world without  shocking  society,  but  only  by 
throwing  the  burden  of  responsibility  on  poor 
Clarissa's  shoulders  as  the  result  of  filial  dis- 
obedience. With  our  Fanny  that  crust  never  for  a 
moment  really  breaks,  and  her  satire  skates  over 
the  surface  of  life  with  unfaltering  dexterity. 

If  this  were  all,  we  might  call  her  modest 
rather  than  prudish  ;  but  into  that  same  forbidden 
limbo  is  relegated  every  immediate  and  penetrat- 
ing reflection  ;  it  is  as  if  the  reverend  Constitution 
of  the  land  had  been  builded  on  the  law,  Thou 
shalt  not  think  the  thing  that  has  not  been 
thought.  English  literature  as  a  body  has  alas  ! 
served  that  law  only  too  well,  and  we  turn  else- 
whither for  quick  and  logical  thought ;  but  in 
this  long  diary  the  lack  is  unusually  apparent.  I 
cannot  recall  in  all  the  eight  volumes  of  this 
record  kept  for  seventy-three  years  a  single  sen- 
tence that  shows  any  immediate  reaction  of  the 
writer's  mind  on  the  troublesome  problems  of 
existence.  She  seems  to  have  passed  through 
the  world  without  experience  and  without  ques- 
tioning ;  and  at  the  end  we  still  think  of  her  as 


"daddy"  crisp  6i 

the  girl,  very  English  and  very  innocent,  scrib- 
bling her  satire  in  the  protection  of  the  great  Sir 
Isaac's  observatory.  Perhaps  we  cover  up  her 
defects  by  remembering  that  Newton  himself, 
despite  his  mightiness  in  science,  was  but  a  child 
when  he  came  to  reflect  on  human  life  ;  and  cer- 
tainly there  are  few  more  entertaining  books  and 
few  names  fairer  and  dearer  to  us  than  hers. 

NOTE  ON  "DADDY"  CRISP 


If  any  evidence,  further  than  Fanny  Burney's  Diary, 
is  necessary  to  show  the  entire  distortion  of  Macaulay's 
picture  of  Samuel  Crisp  as  a  wild  beast  in  his  lair,  it  is 
abundantly  forthcoming  in  a  collection  of  letters  written 
by  Crisp  from  Chessington  to  his  sister,  Mrs.  Sophia  Crisp 
Cast,  at  Burford,  and  now  edited  by  Mr.  W.  H.  Hutton. 
Crisp  was  a  disappointed  man,  no  doubt,  and  weariness 
of  the  world,  as  much  as  the  need  of  economising  money 
and  health,  led  him  to  make  his  home  at  Chesington  (as 
it  was  then  spelled),  where  there  was  only  one  "safe  route 
across  the  wild  common,"  to  which  he  gave  the  clew  to 
his  friends  as  a  secret.  But  there  was  nothing  morose  in 
his  character,  nothing  peevish  in  his  retirement.  There 
is  a  greater  measure  of  truth  in  the  epitaph  which  Dr. 
Burney  wrote  for  his  friend,  and  which  may  still  be  read 
in  the  village  church  : 

"  Reader,  this  cold  and  humble  spot  contains 
The  much  lamented,  much  revered  remains 
Of  one  whose  wisdom,  learning,  taste  and  sense 
Good  humour'd  art  and  wide  benevolence 
Cheer'd  and  enlighten'd  all  this  hamlet  round 
Wherever  genius,  worth,  or  want  was  found. 


62  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

To  few  it  is  that  bounteous  Heav'n  imparts 
Such  depth  of  knowledge,  and  such  taste  in  arts, 
Such  penetration  and  enchanting  powers 
Of  brightening  social  and  convivial  hours. 
Had  he  through  life  been  blest  by  Nature  kind 
With  health  robust  of  body  as  of  mind, 
With  skill  to  serve  and  charm  mankind  so  great 
In  Arts,  in  Science,  Letters,  Church  or  State, 
His  name  the  Nation's  annals  had  enroll'd, 
And  virtues  to  remotest  ages  told." 

Like  most  letters  of  the  age,  these  of  "  Daddy  "  Crisp 
have  a  good  deal  to  say  about  his  own  health  and  his 
correspondent's.  "I  stand  in  the  first  place,"  he  writes, 
"totally  self-condemned  for  my  own  notorious  indolence 
and  disuse  of  exercise  through  the  whole  winter,  besides 
a  most  senseless  disregard  to  a  proper  diet  of  regimen,  for 
the  sake  of  indulging  appetite  for  the  present  moment." 
No  wonder  that  he  feels  "that  hollow  inside,"  and  cries 
out  "  That  old  Adam  is  a  powerful  obstinate  antagonist !  " 
(with  an  emphasis  of  capitals  which  I  forego).  Clearly, 
Fanny's  friend  was  not  made  for  the  battle  of  life,  either 
with  theatre-managers  or  with  his  own  unruly  members. 
It  is  clear,  too,  that  he  was  tender  of  himself,  fearing 
exposure,  and  loving  the  chimney  corner.  So  he  writes 
to  his  sister,  "Dear  Sop,"  that  he  will  be  glad  if  certain 
people  do  not  visit  him  and  put  him  out  with  their  comings 
and  goings.  "Besides,"  he  adds,  "this  cold  weather,  I 
want  to  creep  into  the  fire  myself,  in  my  own  great  chair, 
and  not  be  obliged  to  do  the  honours  &c.;  whereas,  I 
make  Jem  [Capt.  James  Burney]  and  Fanny  make  room 
for  me,  and  never  mind  them,  nor  put  myself  the  least 
out  of  my  way  for  them."  It  is  the  very  perfection  of  the 
grumbling,  frileux,  habit-ridden,  but  warm-hearted  old 
bachelor.  When  he  is  invited  by  the  Thrales  to  Streat- 
ham,  where  Fanny  ancj  the  great  Samuel  are  staying,  this 


63 

lesser  Samuel  cauuot  sleep  out  of  his  own  bed  aud  is  deter- 
mined to  return  the  same  night,  though  that  means  two 
hours  of  driving  in  the  dark.  He  goes,  and  reports  a  vast 
deal  of  company  at  the  dinner — "two  courses  of  21  Dishes 
each,  besides  Removes;  and  after  that  a  dessert  of  a  piece 
•with  the  Dinner — Pines  and  Fruits  of  all  sorts;  Ices, 
Crcatns,  &c.,  &c.,  &c.,  without  end— everything  in  plate, 
of  which  such  a  profusion  and  such  a  Side  Board:  I  never 
saw  such  at  any  Nobleman's."  Here  his  grammar  ap- 
parently gives  way  under  the  magnificence,  butthatwasa 
matter  easily  dispensed  with  by  the  bestof  these  eighteenth- 
century  writers,  and  if  we  owed  gratitude  to  Dr.  Johnson 
for  nothing  else,  we  should  still  be  in  his  debt  for  teaching 
us  the  diflfereuce  between  written  and  spoken  language. 
But  grammar  returns  with  his  calmer  mood.  "I  got 
away,"  he  adds,  "and  reach'd  home  by  9  o'clock,  and  glad 
I  was  to  creep  again  into  my  own  Nest." 

If  Crisp  worried  a  good  deal  about  his  various  ailments, 
he  was  even  more  anxious  about  his  sister,  and  he  had  an 
eye,  too,  for  Fanny's  health,  as  we  know.  He  had  reason 
enough  to  dread  sickness.  The  wonder  is  that  nature 
ever  resisted  the  furious  assaults  of  the  doctors  in  those 
days.  Their  treatment  ofdisease  is  notorious,  but  it  would 
not  be  easy  to  recall  a  better  instance  than  that  given  in 
one  of  Crisp's  letters.  Dr.  Jebb  visits  at  Streatham,  where 
he  finds  the  ladies  at  tea  and  Mr.  Thrale  in  his  chair  by 
the  fire.  The  rest,  though  rather  long,  may  be  given  in 
Crisp's  own  words  : 

"When  he  came  up  to  Mr.  T.  andask'dhimhowhewas; 
he  made  no  answer;  he  observ'd  his  Eyes  rowling  in  his 
head— he  felt  his  pulse  and  cried  out,  Hey  day  !  why,  what 
are  you  all  about?  Why  this  man  's  very  ill !  Up  they 
all  started  in  a  fright;  the  Dr.  then  shook  him  and  at  last 
made  him  get  out  of  his  Chair;  he  then  cried  out  he  was 
very  cold,  and  had  a  shivering  Fit.  The  Company  all 
thought  of  nothing  but  a  return  of  the  same  Fits  he  had 


64  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

had  before,  and  if  Dr.  Jebb  had  not  been  there  they  would 
have  instantly  had  him  blooded,  like  an  ox,  as  he  was 
before.  Providentially  his  presence  prevented  this  discip- 
line and  certainly  sav'd  his  Life — he  ordered  him  instantly 
to  bed,  to  be  plied  with  hot  white  wine  whey — stay'd  with 
him  3  hours  watching  his  Pulse;  declar'd  some  Crisis  was 
coming  on;  ordered  the  whey  to  be  made  quite  strong, 
and  ply  him  all  night  with  it.  Next  morning  early 
return'd;  ordered  him  to  drink  large  quantities  of  Port, 
above  a  bottle  a  Day,  and  a  large  proportion  of  brandy 
mix'd  with  the  Port — likewise  to  give  him  the  highest 
things  to  eat,  and  as  plentifully  as  he  could  take  them — 
port  with  brandy  without  all  Stint.  The  bystanders  were 
frighted,  but  the  Dr.  persisted,  and  at  last  by  this  hot 
work  produced  a  violent  Boil  in  the  Nape  of  his  neck, 
which  indeed  proved  a  Carbuncle;  he  still  went  on  heating 
him  and  feeding  him  up  in  this  manner,  which  he  con- 
tinues to  this  hour,  and  by  his  bold  and  judicious  pro- 
ceeding has  obtain'd  what  he  wanted.  His  Carbuncle 
has  been  open'd  before  ripe,  by  orders,  vast  quantities  of 
crude  undigested  blood  squeezed  out  by  violence  with 
most  excruciating  Pain  and  now  this  en  venom'd  Carbuncle 
is  become  mild,  cool,  digests  great  Quantities  of  laudable 
matter;  the  patient  is  easy,  comfortable  in  Spirits,  and 
Sharp,  the  famous  Surgeon,  and  the  Dr.  both  declare  him 
a  restor'd  Man,  and  in  all  probability  the  secret,  and 
dreadful  cause  of  his  several  late  dangerous  attacks,  is 
radically  and  eflfectually  remov'd;  there's  a  Cure  for 
you!  " 

Alas,  Mr.  Thrale  died  in  a  few  months,  despite  the 
physician  and  his  cure.  Fanny  also  was  ill  at  the  time 
from  overwork  on  Cecilia,  and  Dr.  Jebb  did  his  best  to 
deprive  us  of  that  vessel  of  delight. 

There  is  not  so  much  in  these  Letters  about  Fanny  as 
we  should  like,  but  occasional  glimpses  confirm  the  best 
we   had   already  known   of  her.     "She  is  courted,   and 


"daddy  "    CRISP  65 

almost  adored  by  the  wits,"  "she  is  followed  and  addressed 
as  if  she  was  Pope,"  but  her  native  simplicity  and 
modesty  remain  unchanged;  she  still  clings  to  her  old 
friends  and  sends  a  man  with  a  note  at  ten  o'clock  at 
night  to  inquire  after  "Daddy"  Crisp's  health. 


GEORGE  HERBERT 

No  other  of  our  lesser  poets  has  received  the 
same  long  and  detailed  study  which  Prof.  George 
Herbert  Palmer  has  lavished  on  the  Rector  of 
Bemerton.  As  he  lay  in  his  cradle,  he  says,  a 
devotee  of  Herbert  gave  him  the  old  poet's  name, 
dedicating  his  life  by  that  act  to  the  service  of 
so  venerable  a  godfather.  And  the  fruit  of  this 
devotion  of  fifty  years  is  now  before  us  in  an 
elaborate  edition  of  Herbert,  that  is  learned  with- 
out being  pedantic,  and  full  without  being 
replete — the  kind  of  work  of  which  our  universi- 
ties might  well  be  more  prodigal'.  In  establish- 
ing the  text  he  has,  I  presume,  left  nothing  for 
the  future  to  correct.  He  has  discriminated,  as 
no  one  before  him  had  thought  of  doing,  between 
the  earlier  and  the  later  poems.  And  he  has 
gone  further  than  that ;  by  separating  the 
poems  into  homogeneous  groups,  he  has  thrown 
the  development  and  inner  changes  of  the  writer 
into  sharp  relief ;  a  caviller  might  even  say  that 
the  relief  is  here   too   high,  and  that  a   certain 

'^The  English  Works  of  George  Herbert.    Newly  ar- 
ranged and  annotated  and  considered  in  relation  to  his 
life,  by  George  Herbert  Palmer.    Three  volumes.     Bos- 
ton :  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co.,  1905. 
66 


GEORGE  HERBERT  67 

Injustice  results  from  raising  the  wavering  moods 
of  a  man  into  contradictions  of  character.  To  all 
this  he  has  added  a  series  of  essays  on  the  life 
and  writings  of  Herbert  which  form  a  proper 
introduction  to  the  editorial  part  of  the  volumes. 
In  particular  the  chapter  on  77^1?  Type  of  Reli- 
gioics  Poetry  displays  exemplary  knowledge  of  a 
great  and  complicated  movement. 

It  might  seem  as  if  little  were  left  for  the 
gleaner  in  this  field,  as  if,  indeed,  any  further 
writing  on  this  subject  would  be  superfluous  or 
presumptuous  ;  and  yet  I  trust  this  is  not  entirely 
the  case.  It  is  even  possible  that  the  minute 
analysis  of  Professor  Palmer's  method  has  hin- 
dered him  in  seeing  the  real  significance  of  his 
theme  as  a  whole  ;  otherwise  it  is  hard  to  under- 
stand how  he  could  wave  aside  so  cavalierly  the 
character  which  Herbert  bore  to  his  contempo- 
raries, and  has  since  borne  to  all  the  world.  "  My 
brother  George,"  wrote  the  baron  of  Cherbury, 
"was  so  excellent  a  scholar,  that  he  was  made 
the  public  orator  of  the  University  in  Cambridge, 
some  of  whose  English  works  are  extant,  which, 
though  they  be  rare  in  their  kind,  yet  are  far 
short  of  expressing  those  perfections  he  had  in 
the  Greek  and  Latin  tongue,  and  all  divine  and 
human  literature  ;  his  life  was  Jioly  and  exemplary , 
in  so  much  that  about  Salisbury,  where  he  lived 
beneficed  for  many  years,  he  was  little  less  than, 
sainted:  he  was  not  exempt  from  passion  and 
choler,  being  infirmities  to  which  all  our  race  is 


68  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

subject,  but  that  excepted,  without  reproach  in 
his  actions."  Holy  and  little  less  than  sainted 
Herbert  appeared  not  only  to  his  brother,  but  to 
all  who  walked  beside  him  ;  nevertheless  in  his 
latest  editor's  mind  than  holy  "  a  more  mislead- 
ing epithet  could  not  have  been  devised."  It 
requires  a  certain  temerity  thus  to  run  counter  to 
the  verdict  of  tradition,  and  the  scholar  who  so 
ventures  needs  to  be  well  fortified.  The  fact  is, 
Professor  Palmer,  despite  the  long  absorption  in 
his  theme,  brings  to  it  still  some  alienation  of 
mind.  Now  lack  of  sympathy,  I  know,  is  a 
dubious  phrase  in  criticism  ;  it  is  a  bludgeon  too 
often  raised  by  the  indiscriminating  against  any 
who  condemn  the  lower  and  false  delights  of 
literature  in  favour  of  what  is  high  and  true. 
But  in  the  present  case  it  would  seem  to  be  con- 
nected with  a  more  serious  failure  of  the  historic 
sense.  That  sense  has  a  double  function ;  it 
points  out  the  differences  that  creep  in  from  age 
to  age,  the  changes  of  manners  and  forms  that 
come  with  time  and  make  the  generations  of 
men  like  foreigners  to  one  another.  And  here 
the  training  of  the  day  will  keep  any  scholar 
from  error.  But  we  are  also  justified  in  demand- 
ing that  clearer  faculty  of  vision  which  pierces 
beneath  those  transient  modes  and  discovers 
what  each  age  has  attained  of  essential  and 
permanent  truth.  This  is  a  high  faculty  of  scholar- 
ship which  is  growing  daily  rarer  among  us 
since  we  have  become  enslaved  by  the  philosophy 


GEORGE  HERBERT  69 

of  progress,  and  one  may  suspect  that  Professor 
Palmer  has  not  altogether  avoided  bowing  the 
knee  to  the  Idol  of  the  Present.  But  for  this,  I 
do  not  see  why  there  should  be  in  his  essays  so 
continued  a  note  of  apology,  as  if  Herbert's 
religious  emotion  were  something  outworn  and 
outgrown,  something  comprehensible  to  the  man 
of  to-day  only  by  deliberately  narrowing  his 
larger  spiritual  interests  to  a  lesser  sphere.  At 
least  there  is  room  to  doubt  whether  the  religious 
instinct  has  deepened  with  the  broadening  of  our 
sympathies,  and  I  should  like,  with  all  deference 
to  Professor  Palmer's  authority,  and  with  a  frank 
use  of  the  material  his  volumes  afford,  to  look  at 
Herbert  again  for  a  little  while  as  he  appeared  to 
his  own  age. 

And  I  feel  a  certain  confidence  in  attempting 
this,  because  that  great  lover  of  fish  and  men, 
Izaak  Walton,  has  left  a  life  of  Herbert  which  is 
as  clear  in  purpose  as  it  is  beautiful  in  execution. 
The  Herberts  were  even  then  an  ancient  and 
distinguished  clan.  In  the  middle  of  the  fifteenth 
century  the  family  had  divided,  the  elder  branch 
becoming  the  Earls  of  Pembroke,  and  the  younger 
branch  settling  at  Montgomery,  a  castle  on  the 
eastern  marches  of  Wales.  The  father  of  the 
poet  was  by  direct  descent  fifth  cousin  of  the  two 
brothers  William  and  Philip,  who  held  the  earl- 
dom during  George  Herbert's  time.  The  father 
of  these  earls  had  married  the  sister  Mary  for 
whose  sake  Sir  Philip  Sidney  wrote  his  Arcadia, 


70  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

and  at  Wiltou,  the  home  of  the  Pembrokes, 
where  the  greater  part  of  that  pastoral  was  prob- 
ably composed,  George  Herbert  was  au  intimate 
guest  and  came  into  contact  with  the  finest  liter- 
ary tradition  of  the  Elizabethan  age.  It  is  nec- 
essary to  remember  tliese  things  in  estimating 
what  may  seem  a  touch  of  intellectual  or  spiritual 
pride  in  the  younger  poet. 

George  Herbert  was  born  at  Montgomery, 
April  3,  1593,  being  the  fifth  son  in  a  family  of 
seven  boys  and  three  girls.  The  oldest  brother 
was  Edward,  the  Lord  Herbert  of  Cherbury, 
whose  Autobiography  reads  like  one  of  Defoe's 
novels  with  a  man  of  strange  and  fantastic  chivalry 
instead  of  a  ragamuflSn  for  a  hero.  Another 
brother,  Henry,  was  made  gentleman  of  the 
privy  chamber  and  master  of  the  revels  to  King 
James.  The  father.  Sir  Richard,  died  when 
George  was  only  four  3'ears  old,  and  henceforth 
the  care  of  the  family  fell  upon  the  mother,  Lady 
Magdalen.  Hers  was  a  full  and  bounteous 
nature,  and  one  feels  about  her  presence  that  kind 
of  serene  munificence  which  we  attach  to  the 
great  women  of  that  age  as  to  those  of  none 
other.  She  was  the  friend  and  patron  of  John 
Donne,  who  celebrated  her  autumnal  beauty  in 
more  than  one  poem  during  her  life,  and  at 
her  funeral  preached  a  stately  sermon.  "  Her 
house,"  he  said,  and  how  the  words  carry  us 
back  to  more  spacious  times — "  her  house  was  a 
court  in    the   conversation   of  the   best,  and   an 


GEORGE  HERBERT  7l 

almshouse  in  feeding  the  poor.  God  gave  her 
such  a  comeliness  as  though  she  were  not  proud 
of  it,  yet  she  was  so  content  with  it  as  not  to  go 
about  to  mend  it  by  any  art.  And  for  her  attire, 
it  was  never  sumptuous,  never  sordid,  but  always 
agreeable  to  her  quality  and  agreeable  to  her 
company."  She  had  met  Donne  at  Oxford, 
whither  she  had  gone  after  her  husband's  death 
to  enter  her  oldest  boy,  Edward,  at  Queen's 
College.  There  are  not  many  passages  finer  in 
their  kind  than  that  in  which  Izaak  Walton  tells 
of  her  wise  care  for  a  son  whose  erratic  fancy  she 
no  doubt  saw  and  trembled  for  : 

She  continued  there  with  him,  and  still  kept  him  in  a 
moderate  awe  of  her  self,  and  so  much  under  her  own 
eye,  as  to  see  and  converse  with  him  daily  ;  but  she  man- 
aged this  power  over  him  without  any  such  rigid  sour- 
ness as  might  make  her  company  a  torment  to  her  Child  ; 
but  with  such  a  sweetness  and  complyance  with  the 
recreations  and  pleasures  of  youth,  as  did  incline  him 
willingly  to  spend  much  of  his  time  in  the  company  of 
his  dear  and  careful  Mother  ;  which  was  to  her  great 
content  :  for  she  would  often  say,  That  as  our  bodies 
take  a  nourishment  sutable  to  the  meat  on  which  we 
feed ;  so  our  souls  do  as  insensibly  take  in  vice  by  the 
example  or  Conversation  with  wicked  Company  :  and 
would  therefore  as  often  say.  That  ignorance  of  Vice  was 
the  best  preservation  of  Vertue  ;  and  that  the  very  know- 
ledge of  wickedness  was  as  tinder  to  inflame  and  kindle 
sin  and  keep  it  burning.  For  these  reasons  she  indeared 
him  to  her  own  Company,  and  continued  with  him  in 
Oxford  four  years  ;  in  which  tiuie  her  great  and  harmless 
wit,    her   chearful  gravity,  and  her  obliging  behaviour. 


72  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

gain'd  her  an  acquaintance  and  friendship  with  most  of 
any  eminent  worth  or  learning,  that  were  at  that  time  in 
or  near  that  University. 

There  is  no  need  of  apologising  for  the  length 
of  this  quotation,  for  it  would  be  wanting  in  gal- 
lantry to  pass  by  so  brave  and  magnanimous  a 
figure  with  only  a  word  of  recognition.  But  more 
than  that,  the  two  strongest  influences  in  Her- 
bert's life  were  his  mother  and  that  poet-friend 
for  whom,  as  Walton  says,  she  had  "  an  amity 
made  up  of  a  chain  of  suitable  inclinations  and 
virtues."  George  was  with  his  mother  during 
these  Oxford  years,  and  already,  we  may  believe, 
he  was ' '  eminent  and  lovely  in  his  innocent  age, '  * 
as  he  is  said  to  have  been  a  little  later  at  West- 
minster School.  A  boy's  mind  developed  early 
in  those  days,  and  it  is  not  forcing  matters  to 
suppose  that  he  was  impressed  by  the  handsome 
Italian-looking  poet,  and  wondered  at  some  of  his 
strange  poems,  for  Donne  was  then  a  young  man 
under  thirty,  a  writer  of  passionate,  haunting 
verse,  and  not  yet  the  grave  dean  of  St.  Paul's. 

George  did  not,  however,  make  Oxford  his 
university,  but  from  Westminster  went  to  Trinity 
College,  Cambridge,  winning  a  scholarship  in 
1609,  and  taking  his  bachelor's  degree  three 
years  later.  Already  he  was  preluding  to  his  life 
work.  In  the  first  of  his  college  years  he  sent 
his  mother  a  New  Year's  gift  of  verse  with  a 
letter,  of  which  Walton  has  preserved  this  signi- 
ficant fragment  : 


GEORGE  HERBERT  73 

But  I  fear  the  heat  of  my  late  Ague  hath  dried  up  those 
springs,  by  which  Scholars  say  the  Muses  used  to  take 
up  their  habitations.  However,  I  need  not  their  help 
to  reprove  the  vanity  of  those  many  Love-poems,  that 
are  daily  writ,  and  consecrated  to  Venus  ;  nor  to  bewail 
that  so  few  are  writ,  that  look  towards  God  and  Heaven. 
For  my  own  part,  my  meaning  (dear  Mother)  is,  in  these 
Sonnets,  to  declare  my  resolution  to  be,  that  my  poor 
Abilities  in  Poetry,  shall  be  all  and  ever  consecrated  to 
Gods  glory :  and  I  beg  you  to  receive  this  as  one 
testimony. 

My  God,  where  is  that  antient  heat  towards  thee, 

Wherewith  whole  showls  of  Martyrs  once  did  burn, 

Besides  their  other  flames  ?    Doth  Poetry 

"Wear  Venus  Livery?  only  serve  her  turn  ? 

"Why  are  not  Sonnets  made  of  thee,  and  layes 

"Upon  thine  Altar  burnt  ?    Cannot  thy  love 

Heighten  a  spirit  to  sound  out  thy  praise 

As  well  as  any  she  ?    Cannot  thy  Dove 

Outstrip  their  Cupid  easily  in  flight? 

Or,  since  thy  ways  are  deep,  and  still  the  same, 

"Will  not  a  verse  run  smooth  that  bears  thy  name  ? 

"Why  doth  that  fire,  which  by  thy  power  and  might 

Each  breast  does  feel,  no  braver  fewel  choose 

Thau  that,  which  one  day,  Worms  may  chance  refuse  ? 

The  sonnet  (with  its  sequel,  which  I  omit)  may 
not  rank  high  as  poetry,  and  indeed  Herbert 
himself  was  afterwards  to  discard  it  from  his 
approved  verse,  but,  all  things  considered,  it  is 
remarkable  as  the  profession  of  a  young  man  of 
seventeen.  It  marks  in  a  curious  way  the  cross- 
ing of  the  two  main  influences  on  his  mind. 
From  his  childhood,  apparently,  his  mother  had 


74  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

destined  him  for  the  Church,  being  persuaded  to 
this,  it  may  be,  by  his  feeble  health,  or  by  a 
precocious  vein  of  piety  in  the  lad.  It  cannot  be 
asserted  too  strongly  that  Herbert's  was  a  pliable 
nature,  not  without  gusty  flaws  of  temper  and 
conscious  always  of  the  proud  generations  that 
lay  behind  him,  but  at  bottom  docile  and  subject 
to  outer  influences.  Other  more  original  forces, 
such  as  that  of  Nicholas  Ferrar,  were  to  afiect 
his  religious  convictions,  but,  above  all,  it  was 
the  strong  spirit  of  his  mother  that  moulded  his 
to  the  forms  of  piety.  His  letter,  written  on  the 
eve  of  manhood,  may  be  read  as  an  avowal  to 
dedicate  himself,  if  not  as  a  priest  at  least  as  a 
poet,  to  the  life  she  designed  for  him. 

And  it  shows,  to  an  equal  degree,  the  influence 
of  his  mother's  friend,  John  Donne.  There  is 
nothing  of  the  eagle  in  Herbert,  nothing  of  the 
soaring  quality  which  lifted  Donne  out  of  the 
common  sphere,  into  his  own  supreme  dominion, 
nothing  of  that  originality  which  makes  of  Donne 
one  of  the  few  real  turning-points  in  our  litera- 
ture. Herbert  was  content  to  look  up  at  that 
dizzy  flight  and  follow  with  humbler  wing. 
How  much  his  poems  took  their  style  and  man- 
ner from  Donne's  might  be  shown  by  a  hundred 
points.  Donne,  apparently,  had  found  the  great 
conventions  of  the  Elizabethan  school  tiresome 
and  unreal,  and  he  had  broken  through  them  as 
resolutely  as  Wordsworth  was  to  rebel  against 
those  of  the  eighteenth  century.     He  swept  away 


GEORGE  HERBERT  75 

not  only  the  frigid  platitudes  of  the  sonnet,  but  also 
the  flowing  ease  of  the  lyric  and  the  larger  liberty 
of  the  drama.  With  him  the  language  must  be 
fresh  and  immediate  ;  sharp,  unusual  words  must 
cut  through  the  crust  of  convention  ;  the  mind 
must  be  surprised  out  of  its  equilibrium  by  novel 
juxtapositions  ;  the  soul  must  be  stirred  in  its 
most  secret  recess  by  the  sudden  shock  of  unex- 
pected emotions.  Like  Socrates,  he  would  rouse 
men  from  their  apathy  by  the  jingling  of  pots 
and  pans  and  all  common  things.  It  is  not  the 
highest  form  of  poetry,  for  that,  like  manners, 
must  rest  on  a  noble  convention  and  avoid  the 
whim  and  license  of  the  impertinent  individual ; 
but  it  was  new  and  stimulating,  exquisite  at 
times  and  again  merely  grotesque.  In  all  these 
things  Herbert  followed  his  master,  only  soften- 
ing the  cruder  asperities  and  exercising  a  gentle- 
manly taste  which  his  model  never  possessed. 
With  the  other  poets  of  the  Jacobean  and  Caro- 
line age  he  adopted  Donne's  use  of  "  conceits  "  ; 
he  even  directly  imitated  what  is  perhaps  the 
most  curious  extravagance  in  that  Museum  of 
Wit.  Donne  had  thought  proper  to  introduce  an 
Epithalamium  with  a  startling  description  of  the 
morning  that  ushers  in  the  happy  day — and  he 
succeeds.  All  the  "chirping  choristers"  greet 
the  dawn  in  his  verse,  and  then — 

The  husband  cock  looks  out,  and  straight  is  sped, 
Aud  meets  his  wife,  which  brings  her  feather-bed. 

Herbert  kept  the  metaphor,  but  applied  it  to  a 


76  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

different   kind  of  creature,  with  no  decrease   of 
absurdity  in  this  case,  it  must  be  confessed  : 

God  gave  thy  soul  brave  wings ;  put  not  those  feathers 
Into  a  bed,  to  sleep  out  all  ill  weathers. 

But  the  influence  of  Donne  goes  deeper  than 
style  and  manner.  It  is  probable  that  Herbert's 
very  desire  to  temper  religion  with  poetry  was 
sustained,  if  not  created,  by  the  example  of  his 
friend,  and  certainly,  I  think,  his  ambition  to  be 
the  lyric  poet  of  divine  love  is  derived  from  that 
source.  Donne's  life  had  suffered  a  division  such 
as  was  regular  enough  in  those  days,  however 
suspicious  it  may  appear  to  us.  In  youth  and 
early  manhood  he  had  given  himself  up  to  wan- 
ton intrigues  and  had  written  a  series  of  poems 
which  betray  only  too  frankly  his  irregular 
passions.  Afterwards  he  turned  to  religion, 
disavowed  his  earlier  pursuits,  and  sought  to 
make  poetry  the  handmaid  of  his  new  faith.  It 
was  a  course  quite  familiar  to  his  contemporaries, 
corresponding  to  the  sharp  cleavage  in  their 
minds  between  secular  and  sacred  things.  So 
Joseph  Hall  indited  scurrilous  satires  before  tak- 
ing orders  and  devoting  his  pen  to  Christian 
meditations  ;  and  a  little  later  Vaughan,  to  name 
no  others,  was  to  repent  his  youthful  servitude  to 
the  profane  Muse.  Now  Herbert  began  his  poet- 
ical preludings  just  about  the  time  when  Donne 
was  passing  from  his  first  to  his  second  career. 
We  have  a  letter,  dated  exactly  July  ii,  1607, 


GEORGE  HERBERT  77 

which  Donne  sent  to  lyady  Magdalen  with  a 
copy  of  Holy  Hym7is  a7id  So7inets,  and  a  sonnet 
addressed  personally  to  the  recipient.  They 
were  no  doubt  read  by  I^ady  Magdalen's  son, 
who  was  then  fourteen  ;  and  if  there  was  any 
wavering  in  his  mind  between  profane  and 
religious  verse,  these  lines  may  have  weighed  in 
his  decision  : 

O !  might  those  sighs  and  tears  return  again 

Into  my  breast  and  eyes,  -which  I  have  spent, 

That  I  might  in  this  holy  discontent 

Mourn  with  some  fruit,  as  I  have  mourned  in  vain. 

Again,  three  years  later,  Donne,  writing  to  Sir 
Henry  Goodyere,  promises  a  copy  of  his  stanzas 
called  A  Litany  which  he  compares  with  the 
poems  canonised  by  Pope  Nicholas  and  com- 
manded for  public  service  in  the  churches  ;  but 
mine,  he  adds,  "  is  for  the  lesser  chapels,  which 
are  my  friends."  It  is  a  pleasant  fancy  to  think 
that  Herbert,  then  at  Cambridge,  was  one  of 
these  lesser  chapels,  and  may  have  received  the 
Litany  from  Donne  ;  if  so,  he  would  have  paused 
at  the  twenty-seventh  stanza: 

That  learning,  Thine  ambassador, 
From  Thine  allegiance  we  never  tempt ; 

That  beauty,  paradise's  flower 
For  physic  made,  from  poison  be  exempt ; 

That  wit — born  apt  high  good  to  do — 
By  dwelling  lazily 
On  nature's  nothing  be  not  nothing  too  ; 
That  our  affections  kill  us  not,  nor  die  ; 
Hear  us,  weak  echoes,  O,  Thou  Ear  and  Eye. 


78  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

It  is  dangerously  easj^  I  know,  to  dwell  on  these 
possible  coincidences,  but  at  any  rate  Donne's 
stanza  expresses  the  kind  of  influence  that  was  at 
work  upon  Herbert  when  he  wrote  those  two 
sonnets  to  his  mother.  For  him  there  should  be 
no  such  division  as  that  which  made  two  differ- 
ent poets  of  Donne  ;  he  would  clothe  his  verse  in 
the  "  Venus  livery  "  of  the  early  Donne  and  the 
other  Elizabethans,  but  it  should  be  the  Venus 
Urania ;  he  would  be  the  love-poet  of  religion. 
As  others  had  written  out  their  sighs  and  groans 
to  a  deaf  mistress,  so  would  he  lament  when  his 
prayers  to  Heaven  fell  back  unheard  ;  so  would 
he  exult  when  grace  descended  into  his  heart 
from  above.  But,  and  the  point  needs  emphasis, 
there  is  nothing  to  be  rebuked  in  Herbert's  mar- 
riage of  sacred  and  profane  ideas,  nothing  of  the 
sensuousness  that  clings  to  the  ardours  of  Cra- 
shaw  ;  above  all,  no  taint  of  decay  such  as  repels 
a  clean  mind  in  Verlaine's  sickly  fusion  of  the 
flesh  and  the  spirit.  It  is  more  in  Herbert  the 
close  personal  relation  of  the  human  soul  to  God 
and  the  soul's  fluctuations  of  joy  and  despondency 
than  any  dubious  use  of  amorous  metaphor  that 
gives  him  his  position. 

For  a  number  of  years  Herbert  remained  at 
Cambridge,  carrying  out  in  leisurely  fashion  this 
ideal  of  the  Christian  poet.  In  the  few  letters  of 
his  that  have  been  preserved  we  catch  glimpses 
of  his  life,  of  his  unstable  health,  and  of  his  stu- 
dent needs.     Best  and  homeliest  of  all  is  a  long 


GEORGE  HERBERT  79 

epistle  to  Sir  John  Danvers,  the  generous  but 
somewhat  erratic  gentleman  whom  his  mother 
had  married  after  a  widowhood  of  twelve  years. 
"  I  will  open  my  case  unto  you,"  he  writes, 
"  which  I  think  deserves  the  reading  at  the  least : 
and  it  is  this,  I  want  books  extremely.  You 
know.  Sir,  how  I  am  now  setting  foot  into  di- 
vinity, to  lay  the  platform  of  my  future  life  ;  and 
shall  I  then  be  fain  always  to  borrow  books,  and 
build  on  another's  foundation?  What  tradesman 
is  there  who  will  set  up  without  his  tools  ?  Par- 
don my  boldness.  Sir  ;  it  is  a  most  serious  case, 
nor  can  I  write  coldly  in  that  wherein  consisteth 
the  making  good  of  my  former  education,  of 
obeying  that  spirit  which  hath  guided  me  hither- 
to, and  of  achieving  my  (I  dare  say)  holy  ends. 
.  .  .  I  protest  and  vow,  I  even  study  thrift, 
and  yet  I  am  scarce  able  with  much  ado  to  make 
one  half-year's  allowance  shake  hands  with  the 
other.  And  yet  if  a  book  of  four  or  five  shillings 
come  in  my  way,  I  buy  it,  though  I  fast  for  it ; 
yea,  sometimes  of  ten  shillings.  But,  alas  Sir, 
what  is  that  to  those  infinite  volumes  of  divinity, 
which  yet  every  day  swell  and  grow  bigger?" 
That  was  in  1617,  when  he  had  been  in  residence 
for  eight  years.  In  16 19,  his  scholarship,  joined, 
as  Walton  says,  "  with  a  high  fancy,  a  civil  and 
sharp  wit,  and  with  a  natural  elegance,"  brought 
its  proper  reward  and  he  was  appointed  to  be 
Orator  for  the  University.  He  describes  the 
duties  of  his  office  pleasantly  in  a  letter  to  his 


8o  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Stepfather  as  the  finest,  though  not  the  gainfull- 
est,  to  be  had  :  "  For  the  orator  writes  all  the  uni- 
versity letters,  makes  all  the  orations,  be  it  to  the 
King,  prince,  or  whatever  comes  to  the  univer- 
sity ;  to  requite  these  pains,  he  takes  place  next 
the  doctors,  is  at  all  their  assemblies  and  meet- 
ings, and  sits  above  proctors ;  is  regent  or 
non-regent,  at  his  pleasure ;  and  such  like  gay- 
nesses,  which  will  please  a  young  man  well." 
The  honour  and  the  high  society  which  now 
opened  to  him  were  in  full  accord  with  Herbert's 
temperament.  He  became  a  favourite  with  King 
James,  and  made  a  point  of  attending  the  court 
when  it  moved  within  reach  of  Cambridge,  even 
going  so  far  as  to  leave  the  routine  of  the  ofiBce 
to  his  secretary  for  this  purpose.  He  grew  inti- 
mate with  Bacon,  whom  he  addressed,  on  the 
publication  of  his  Instauratio  Magna,  as  "  Mun- 
dique  et  animarum  Sacerdos  unicus,"  and  who 
in  turn  consulted  Herbert's  opinion  before  he 
would  expose  any  of  his  books  to  be  printed,  and 
in  1625  dedicated  to  Herbert  his  Tra^islation  of 
Certain  Psalms  into  English  Verse.  He  was 
undoubtedly  fluttered  by  these  worldly  approba- 
tions, and  lured  to  seek  higher  honours  and  to 
travel  abroad,  but  now  as  always  he  was 
anchored  by  the  steady  trust  of  his  mother  and 
kept  from  perilous  flights  : 

Whereas  my  birth  and  spirit  rather  took 
The  way  that  takes  the  town. 


GEORGE  HERBERT  8l 

Thou  didst  betray  me  to  a  lingring  book 

Aud  wrap  me  in  a  gown. 
I  was  entangled  in  the  world  of  strife 
Before  1  had  the  power  to  change  my  life. 

But  all  this  may  not  mean  that  Herbert  either 
in  act  or  thought  betrayed  the  purpose  to  which 
he  had  dedicated  himself.  The  fair  and  innocent 
formalities  of  life  were  a  part  of  his  nature  ;  they 
even  fitted  in  with  his  poetic  aspirations.  Later, 
when  the  shadow  of  death  was  upon  him,  he 
might  fall  into  the  common  dualism  of  his  age 
and  speak  with  repentance  of  the  content  he  had 
"taken  in  beauty,  in  wit,  in  music,  and  pleasant 
conversation,"  but  no  such  doubts  tyrannised 
over  him  now ;  his  biographer  Oley  could  even 
despair  of  describing  "  that  person  of  his,  which 
afiorded  so  unusual  a  contesseration  of  elegancies 
and  singularities  to  the  beholder."  Clothes 
might  be  a  matter  of  significance  to  him,  as  in 
our  day  they  were  to  Mr.  Shorthouse ;  these 
things,  which  other  less  devout  souls  have  so 
despised,  formed  then  a  part  of  his  sacramenta- 
rian  view  of  religion  as  they  did  to  John  Ingle- 
sant,  who,  in  many  but  not  all  ways,  is  the 
modern  counterpart  of  that  seventeenth -century 
faith. 

Let  thy  minde's  sweetness  have  his  operation 
Upon  thy  body,  clothes,  and  habitation, 

Herbert  had  written  in  his  Cambridge  period. 
He  might  have  called  virtue,  as  did  St.  Augus- 
6 


82:  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

tine,  a  vera  ordo  m  amove,  and  dignified  the  order- 
liness of  a  man's  outer  habit  as  the  reflection  of 
an  inner  consonance  with  God's  law.  He  was 
afterwards  to  find  the  desired  harmony  of  life  in 
the  humbler  practices  of  a  priest ;  now  his  native 
instinct  led  his  feet  rather  to  the  King's  court. 
We  whose  training  is  so  different  must  remember 
that  to  many  in  those  days  kingship  was  a  divine 
institution,  just  as  was  the  Church.  It  gathered 
up  and  symbolised  the  requirements  of  orderly 
beauty  in  things  secular,  as  the  Church  did  in 
things  spiritual,  and  the  two  at  times  might  seem 
to  a  mind  steeped  in  symbolism  almost  to  flow 
together.  "  Think  the  king  sees  thee  still," 
Herbert  wrote  for  his  own  guidance  ;  "for  his 
King  does."  Nor  were  his  vows  forgotten; 
through  all  these  distractions  he  added  steadily 
to  his  little  store  of  poetry  which  should  be,  as  it 
were,  his  courtly  Book  of  Common  Prayer  : 

To  write  a  verse  or  two  is  all  the  praise 
That  I  can  raise. 
Mend  my  estate  in  any  wayes, 
Thou  shalt  have  more. 

O  raise  me  then  !    Poore  bees,  that  v?ork  all  day, 

Sting  my  delay ; 
Who  have  a  work  as  well  as  they, 
And  much,  much  more. 

lyCt  us  not,  however,  fall  into  the  other  extreme 
and  exaggerate  the  harmony  of  Herbert's  career. 
He  was  no   mere  sentimentalist,  but  a   man  of 


GEORGE  HERBERT  83 

subtle  understanding.  He  had  occasional  mo- 
ments of  depression,  as  his  poems  show,  and 
sometimes  felt  that  he  was  still  pausing  below 
the  full  consecration  to  which  his  mother  had 
destined  him,  and  that  he  still  wanted  the  high- 
est grace,  which  comes  with  sacrifice.  In  1626 
he  was  appointed  prebendary  of  the  parish  of 
Leighton,  having  already  received  the  order  of 
deaconship,  and  took  upon  himself  to  rebuild  the 
church  which  was  crumbling  away  into  ruin. 
Five  miles  from  Leighton  was  I^ittle  Gidding, 
where  Nicholas  Ferrar  resided.  He  called  on  his 
friend  for  assistance  in  this  work,  and  from  that 
time  the  two  men  were  vSealed  in  intimacy.  Many 
letters  passed  between  them,  but  these  unfortu- 
nately have  not  come  down  to  us.  In  1627  Lady 
Magdalen  died.  Other  recent  deaths  had 
loosened  his  hold  on  the  world,  but  the  loss  of 
his  mother  cast  him  completely  adrift.  Was  it 
at  this  time  he  wrote  that  strange  poem  of  Mor- 
tificafio7i,  in  which  he  described  the  five  ages  of 
man  as  five  deaths  prefiguring  the  final  transition 
to  the  grave?     It  begins  with  the  cradled  infant : 

How  soon  doth  man  decay  ! 
When  clothes  are  taken  from  a  chest  of  sweets 
To  swaddle  infants,  whose  young  breath 

Scarce  knows  the  way, 
Those  clouts  are  little  winding  sheets 
Which  do  consigne  and  send  them  unto  death : — 

and  ends  with  the  lesson  : 


84  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Man  ere  he  is  aware 
Hath  put  together  a  solemnitie, 

And  drest  his  herse  while  he  has  breath 

As  yet  to  spare. 
Yet  Lord,  instruct  us  so  to  die 
That  all  these  dyings  may  be  life  in  death. 

Herbert,  we  have  seen,  was  much  influenced  by- 
Donne  ;  it  is  curious  to  note  that  in  the  last  ser- 
mon he  ever  preached  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's 
seems  to  have  remembered  this  poem  of  his  pupil 
and  to  have  imitated  it.  "  That  which  we  call 
life,"  he  said,  "  is  but  Hebdomada  viorthwi,  a 
week  of  death.  .  ,  .  Thus  birth  dies  in  in- 
fancy, and  our  infancy  dies  in  youth,  and  youth 
and  the  rest  die  in  age,  and  age  also  dies  and 
determines  all." 

Immediately  after  his  supreme  loss,  Herbert 
gave  up  the  oratorship  and  left  the  university. 
For  three  years  he  led  a  wandering  life,  unsettled 
in  body  and  mind.  There  was,  in  fact,  some- 
thing of  Hamlet  in  his  mental  disposition,  and 
the  subtleties  of  the  imagination  overbalanced  the 
will  to  act.  It  was  his  nature  to  hesitate  and 
dally  until  some  impulse  from  without  stimulated 
him,  and  then  his  movement  was  curiously  ab- 
rupt. So  it  was  that,  in  1629,  he  suddenly  mar- 
ried Jane  Danvers,  a  relative  of  the  Barl  of 
Danby  with  whom  he  had  become  acquainted 
through  his  mother's  second  husband.  Tradition 
would  have  it  that  this  event  occurred  only  three 
days  after  his  first  interview  with  the  lady,  and 


GEORGE  HERBERT  85 

such  haste  would  suit  well  enough  with  his 
temper.  The  next  year  he  accepted  the  rector- 
ship of  Fugglestou-cum-Bemerton.  Fuggleston 
church  stood  at  the  gate  of  Wilton,  the  estate  of 
the  Pembrokes,  where  Herbert  was  always  wel- 
come, lying  three  miles  from  Salisbury,  The 
ministry  of  this  place  he  left  to  his  curate,  and 
took  upon  himself  the  care  of  Beraerton,  "  a  piti- 
ful little  chapel  of  ease,"  forty-six  feet  long 
by  eighteen  wide,  with  a  ruinous  rectory  across 
the  way.  Both  church  and  house  he  repaired 
and  adorned  at  his  own  expense.  How  solemnly 
he  entered  upon  his  sacred  charge  may  be  read 
in  the  happy  words  of  Izaak  Walton  : 

When  at  his  Induction  he  was  shut  into  Bemerton 
Church,  being  left  there  alone  to  Toll  the  Bell,  (as  the 
Law  requires  him,)  he  staid  so  much  longer  than  an 
ordinary  time,  before  he  return'd  to  those  Friends  that 
staid  expecting  him  at  the  Church-door,  that  his  Friend 
Mr.  Woodnot  look'd  in  at  the  Church-window,  and  saw 
him  lie  prostrate  on  the  ground  before  the  Altar ;  at 
which  time  and  place  (as  he  after  told  Mr.  Woodnot)  he 
set  some  Rules  to  himself,  for  the  future  manage  of  his 
life ;  and  then  and  there  made  a  vow  to  labour  to  keep 
them.  And  the  same  night  that  he  had  his  Induction,  he 
said  to  Mr.  Woodnot,  I  now  look  back  upon  my  aspiring 
thoughts,  and  think  myself  more  happy  than  if  I  had 
attain'd  what  then  I  so  ambitiously  thirsted  for.  And  I 
can  now  behold  the  Court  with  an  impartial  Eye,  and  see 
plainly  that  it  is  made  up  of  Fraud  and  Titles,  and  Flat- 
tery, and  many  other  such  empty,  imaginary  painted 
Pleasures  ;  Pleasures,  that  are  so  empty,  as  not  to  satisfy 
when  they  are  enjoy'd.     But  in  God  and  his  service,  is  a 


86  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

fulness  of  all  joy  and  pleasure,  and  no  satiety.  And  I 
will  now  use  all  my  endeavours  to  bring  my  Relations 
and  Dependants  to  a  love  and  relyance  on  Him,  who 
never  fails  those  that  trust  him.  But  above  all,  I  will  be 
sure  to  live  well,  because  the  vertuous  life  of  a  Clergy- 
man is  the  most  powerful  eloquence  to  perswade  all  that 
see  it  to  reverence  and  love,  and  at  least  to  desire  to  live 
like  him. 

It  does  not  seem  to  me  that  such  words  as 
these  should  lead  us  to  emphasise  the  contrast 
between  Herbert's  courtly  and  his  priestly  life, 
nor  can  I  persuade  myself  that  Professor  Palmer 
is  not  a  little  carried  away  with  his  analytical 
method  when  he  dwells  on  the  fact  that  only 
three  years  out  of  thirty-nine  were  given  to 
the  Church.  There  was  no  convulsion  in  Her- 
bert's inner  experience,  no  wrenching  conversion 
from  the  world,  but  rather  a  growth  in  assurance, 
passing  through  seasons  of  doubt.  His  latest 
verse  is  merely  a  development  and  deepening  of 
what  he  had  set  himself  to  sing  at  the  age  of 
seventeen.  In  all  lives  there  is  a  certain  period 
which  stamps  itself  on  the  popular  memory  as 
expressive  of  the  man's  essential  nature  ;  it  is  not 
measured  by  duration,  but  by  significance.  The 
consummation  of  this  inner  tendency  had  been 
delayed  in  Herbert  by  other  modes  of  fulfilling 
his  ideal,  by  a  hesitancy  of  will,  by  the  feeling  of 
his  friends  that  the  calling  of  a  minister  was  not 
worthy  of  his  high  birth  and  talents,  by  worldly 
allurements,  if  you  please  ;  but  it  came  as  surely 


GEORGE  HERBERT  87 

as  the  tropic  vine  struggles  up  to  freedom,  aud 
in  the  sunlight  spreads  its  blossoms.  After  all, 
he  had  just  turned  thirty -seven  when  he  accepted 
his  charge,  and  should  it  be  weighed  against  him 
that  he  did  not  live  to  complete  his  fortieth  year  ? 
Of  those  three  years  of  priesthood  we  have  a 
picture  of  singular  beauty  and  winsomeness.  To 
the  humblest  duties  of  his  office  he  gave  himself 
with  unreserved  devotion,  and  in  his  prose  trea- 
tise of  The  Country  Parso?i  he  has  left  a  manual 
of  conduct  whose  sincerity  of  aim  and  fine  sim- 
plicity make  it  still  attractive  to-day  to  the  lay 
reader.  About  the  ordinances  of  worship,  which 
he  carried  out  with  extreme  regularity,  his  fancy 
played  with  a  kind  of  cherishing  wit,  as  when  he 
wrote  of  the  communion  cup  : 

O  what  sweetness  from  the  bowl 

Fills  my  soul, 
Such  as  is  and  makes  divin    ! 
Is  some  starre  (fled  from  the  sphere) 

Melted  there, 
As  we  sugar  melt  in  wine? 

His  chief  diversion  now,  as  it  had  always  been, 
was  music.  "  He  was  a  most  excellent  master," 
says  Walton,  "  and  he  did  himself  compose  many 
divine  hymns  and  anthems,  which  he  set  and 
sung  to  his  lute  or  viol.  And,  though  he  was  a 
lover  of  retiredness,  yet  his  love  to  music  was 
such,  that  he  went  usually  twice  every  week,  on 
certain  appointed  days,  to  the  cathedral  church 


88  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

in  Salisbury  ;  and  at  his  return  would  say  that 
his  time  spent  in  prayer  and  cathedral  music 
elevated  his  soul,  and  was  his  heaven  upon  earth. 
But  before  his  return  thence  to  Bemerton  he 
would  usually  sing  and  play  his  part  at  an  ap- 
pointed private  music- meeting  ;  and,  to  justify 
this  practice,  he  would  often  say,  Religion  does 
not  banish  mirth,  but  only  moderates  and  sets 
rules  to  it."  It  was  but  a  walk  of  a  mile  across 
pleasant  meadows  from  Bemerton  to  Salisbury, 
whose  spire  is  visible  from  the  rectorj'  windows. 
Many  times  he  made  this  brief  journey  the  occa- 
sion of  good  works,  and  once  he  appeared  before 
his  hosts  well  spattered  with  mud  from  assisting 
a  poor  stalled  carter.  When  he  was  twitted  by  his 
friends  for  disparaging  himself  with  so  dirty  an 
employment,  his  answer  was  "  that  the  thought 
of  what  he  had  done  would  prove  music  to  him  at 
midnight"  ;  and  added,  "  I  would  not  willingly 
pass  one  day  of  my  life  without  comforting  a  sad 
soul  or  showing  mercy." 

There  were  indeed  times  of  depression,  almost  of 
agony  ;  seasons  when  he  regretted  the  sacrifice  of 
courtly  amenities.  Often  he  found  grief  ' '  a  cun- 
ning guest ' '  ;  often  his  high  pretensions  to  faith 
appeared  to  him  a  mockery,  and  to  many  readers 
the  poems  in  which  he  expresses  these  fluctuations 
of  joy  and  sorrow  will  seem  the  richest  in  human 
experience  of  the  collection.  But  I  cannot  see 
that  for  this  reason  he  should  be  denied  the 
epithet  of  holy  which  those  who  knew  him  best 


GEORGE  HERBERT  89 

were  quickest  to  ascribe  to  him.  His  was  not 
the  spirit  of  the  triumphant  hero,  perhaps  not 
even  that  of  the  martyr,  and  it  is  easy  to  under- 
stand why  he  was  rejected  by  the  fighting  cohort 
of  Oxford  in  the  last  century.  "  The  worthies  of 
the  Church  of  England,"  said  one  of  these  bel- 
ligerents, "  even  when  sharing  the  tender  piety  of 
George  Herbert  or  Bishop  Ken,  fell  short  of  the 
heroic  aims,  the  martial  sanctity,  gained  by  war- 
fare unceasing  against  world,  flesh,  and  devil, 
which  they  found  exhibited  in  Roman  hagi- 
ology."  That  may  be  true,  but  do  we  refuse 
to  call  Bunyan  holy  because  he  wrestled  with 
despair,  or  Fenelon  because  he  hankered  after 
Versailles,  or  St.  Paul  because  he  could  not  pluck 
out  the  thorn  from  his  flesh,  or  the  Master  of  St. 
Paul  for  the  agony  at  Gethsemane  ? 

And  withal  the  dominant  tone  in  Herbert  is 
one  of  quiet  joy  and  peace.  From  the  very 
doubts  and  hesitations  that  beset  him  he  wrung 
a  submissive  victory,  as  may  be  read  in  that  most 
characteristic  of  his  poems.  The  Pulley  : 
When  God  at  first  made  man, 

Having  a  glasse  of  blessings  standing  by. 
Let  us  (said  he)  poure  on  him  all  we  can. 

Let  the  world's  riches,  which  dispersed  lie, 
Contract  into  a  span. 
So  strength  first  made  a  way. 

Then  beautie  flow'd,  then  wisdome,  honour,  pleasure. 
When  almost  all  was  out,  God  made  a  stay, 

Perceiving  that  alone  of  all  his  treasure 
Rest  in  the  bottome  lay. 


90  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

For  if  I  should  (said  he) 
Bestow  this  jewell  also  on  my  creature, 

He  should  adore  my  gifts  instead  of  me, 
And  rest  in  Nature,  not  the  God  of  Nature. 

So  both  should  losers  be. 

Yet  let  him  keep  the  rest, 
But  keep  them  with  repining  restlessnesse. 
Let  him  be  rich  and  wearie,  that  at  least, 
If  goodnesse  leade  him  not,  yet  wearinesse 

May  tosse  him  to  my  breast. 

Will  you  pardon  me  a  fancy  ?  As  often  as  I 
read  these  stanzas  the  picture  rises  before  me  of 
the  Salisbury  fields.  It  is  an  afternoon  of  the 
early  autumn,  when  the  grey  sunlight  shimmers 
in  the  air  and  scarcely  touches  the  earth,  brood- 
ing over  all  things  with  a  kind  of  transient  peace. 
A  country  parson,  after  a  day  of  music  in  the 
cathedral  and  at  the  house  of  a  friend,  is  walking 
homeward.  In  his  heart  is  the  quiet  afterglow 
of  rapture,  not  unlike  the  subdued  light  upon  the 
meadows,  and  he  knows  that  both  are  but  for  a 
little  while.  Memory  is  awake  as  she  is  apt  to 
be  in  the  trail  of  exaltation,  and  he  recalls  the 
earlier  scenes  of  his  life — the  peculiar  consecra- 
tion of  his  youth,  the  half-hearted  ambitions  of 
the  scholar  and  courtier,  the  invisible  guidance 
that  had  brought  him  at  last  to  the  sheltered 
haven  whereto  he  was  even  now  returning.  Pro- 
vidence and  the  world  had  dealt  kindly  with  him 
as  with  few  others,  yet  one  thing  was  still  lacking 
— he  had  not  found  rest.     He  was  aware,  keenly 


GEORGE  HERBERT  9 1 

aware,  that  this  moment  of  perfect  calm  lay  be- 
tween an  hour  of  enthusiasm  and  an  hour  of 
dejection.  He  was  not  like  some  he  knew  who 
laid  violent  hands  on  the  kingdom  of  peace;  he 
must  suffer  his  moods.  And  then  came  the 
recollection  of  the  Greek  Hesiod  whom  he  had 
studied  at  Cambridge,  and  of  the  story  of  Pandora. 
The  quaint  contrast  of  that  myth  with  the  cer- 
tainty of  his  own  faith  teased  him  into  reflection. 
Hope,  indeed,  the  new  dispensation  had  released 
from  the  box  and  had  poured  out  blessings 
instead  of  ills  ;  but  one  thing  still  remained  shut 
up — rest  in  the  bottom  lay.  And  straightway  he 
began  to  remould  the  Greek  fable  to  his  own 
experience. 

All  this  is  consonant  with  the  tone  which  in 
the  beginning  he  adopted  as  the  lyric  poet  of 
divine  love,  and  which  remained  with  him  in  his 
Bemerton  study  : 

Why  do  I  languish  thus,  drooping  and  dull, 

As  if  I  were  all  earth  ? 
O  give  me  quicknesse,  that  I  may  with  mirth 
Praise  thee  brim-full ! 

The  wanton  lover  in  a  curious  strain 

Can  praise  his  fairest  fair. 
And  with  quaiut  metaphors  her  curled  hair 
Curl  o're  again. 

Thou  art  my  lovelinesse,  my  life,  my  light, 

Beautie  alone  to  me. 
Thy  bloudy  death  and  undeserv'd  makes  thee 
Pure  red  and  white. 


92  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Wliere  are  my  lines  then  ?  My  approaches  ?  Views? 

Where  are  my  window-songs? 
Lovers  are  still  pretending,  and  ev'n  wrongs 
Sharpen  their  Muse. 

l/ord,  cleare  thy  gift,  that  with  a  constant  wit 

I  may  but  look  towards  thee. 
Look  onely  ;  for  to  love  thee,  who  can  be, 
What  angel  fit? 

To  some  this  peculiarly  individual  note  in 
religion,  this  anxiety  over  his  personal  beatitude, 
will  be  a  stumbling-block.  "For  the  most  part," 
says  Professor  Palmer  in  disdain,  "he  is  con- 
cerned with  the  small  needs  of  his  own  soul." 
It  is  like  a  taunt  thrown  ungraciously  at  the 
ideals  of  a  great  and  serious  age.  My  dear  sir, 
even  to-day  in  the  face  of  our  magnified  concerns, 
are  the  needs  of  a  man's  soul  so  small  that  we 
dare  speak  of  them  with  contempt?  I  am  not 
holding  a  brief  from  the  human  soul.  Let  it  be, 
if  you  choose,  a  mere  name  for  certain  hopes  and 
fears  which  separate  from  the  world  and  project 
themselves  into  eternity  ;  but  let  us  recognise  the 
fact  that  those  hopes  and  fears  have  been  of  tre- 
mendous force  in  the  past,  and  are  still  worthy  of 
reverence.  It  is  one  of  the  glories  of  Herbert's 
age  that  it  introduced  into  poetry  that  quick  and 
tremulous  sense  of  the  individual  soul.  Reli- 
gion came  to  those  men  with  the  shock  of  a  sud- 
den and  strange  reality,  and  we  who  read  the 
report  of  their  experience  are  ourselves  stirred. 


GEORGE  HERBERT  93 

willingly  or  rebelliously,  to  unused  emotions. 
Do  you  know,  in  fact,  what  most  of  all  is  lack- 
ing in  the  devotional  poetry  of  recent  times  ?  It 
is  just  this  direct  personal  appeal.  Take,  for 
example,  the  better  stanzas  of  Keble's 
Whitsunday  : 

So,  when  the  Spirit  of  our  God 

Came  down  His  flock  to  find, 
A  voice  from  Heaven  was  heard  abroad, 

A  rushing,  mighty  wind. 

Nor  doth  the  outward  ear  alone 

At  that  high  warning  start ; 
Conscience  gives  back  the  appalling  tone ; 

'Tis  echoed  in  the  heart. 

It  fills  the  Church  of  God  ;  it  fills 

The  sinful  world  around  ; 
Only  in  stubborn  hearts  and  wills 

No  place  for  it  is  found. 

That  is  Keble's  version  of  the  coming  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  at  Pentecost ;  set  it  beside  a  single 
stanza  of  Herbert's  poem  of  the  same  name  : 

Listen,  sweet  Dove,  unto  my  song 
And  spread  thy  golden  wings  in  me  ; 
Hatching  my  tender  heart  so  long. 
Till  it  get  wing  and  flie  away  with  thee. 

Is  the  advantage  all  in  favour  of  the  modern  faith  ? 
Or  rather,  is  not  the  response  to  the  descending 
spirit  in  Keble  dulled  by  the  intrusion  of  foreign 
interests,  by  the  sense  that  he  is  writing  for  the 
Church  and  imparting  a  moral  lesson,  whereas 


94  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

in  Herbert  you  feel  the  ecstatic  uplift  that 
springs  from  the  immediate  contact  of  the  poet's 
imagination  with  its  object?  Religion  has 
changed  from  the  soul's  intimate  discovery  of 
beatitude  to  the  dull  convention  of  sermons. 
"  He  speaks  of  God  like  a  man  that  really 
believeth  in  God,"  said  Baxter  of  Herbert;  is 
this  altogether  a  small  matter  ? 

Nor  is  it  quite  true  that  his  personal  concern 
with  religion  is  a  selfish  withdrawal  from  men  or 
that  ' '  any  notion  of  dedicating  himself  to  their 
welfare  is  foreign  to  him."  Such  a  statement 
would  have  been  unintelligible  to  Herbert' s  con- 
temporaries ;  it  forgets  the  sacramental  nature  of 
the  priesthood  as  it  was  then  conceived.  His  days, 
indeed,  were  given  to  the  humblest  duties  and 
charities,  yet  to  his  friends  it  would  have  seemed 
that  the  example  of  so  saintly  a  life  was  a  still 
more  perfect  beneficence  than  any  ministrations 
of  the  body.  Such,  too,  was  the  more  difficult 
ideal  that  Herbert  set  before  himself  : 


Holinesse  on  the  head, 
Light  and  perfections  on  the  breast. 
Harmonious  bells  below,  raising  the  dead 
To  lead  them  unto  life  and  rest  ; 

Thus  are  true  Aarons  drest. 

And,  beyond  the  mere  force  of  example,  it  was 
supposed  that  worship  in  itself  was  an  excellent 
thing,  and  that  some  grace  was  poured  out  upon 


GEORGE  HERBERT  95 

the  people  through  the  daily  intercessions  of  their 
priest : 

Of  all  the  creatures  both  in  sea  and  land 

Onely  to  Man  thou  hast  made  known  thy  wayes, 

And  put  the  penne  alone  into  his  hand, 
And  made  him  Secretarie  of  thy  praise. 

Beasts  fain  would  sing ;  birds  dittie  to  their  notes  ; 

Trees  would  be  tuning  on  their  native  lute 
To  thy  renown  ;  but  all  their  hands  and  throats 

Are  brought  to  Man,  while  they  are  lame  and  mute. 

Man  is  the  world's  high  Priest.     He  doth  present 

The  sacrifice  for  all  ;  while  they  below 
Unto  the  service  mutter  an  assent, 

Such  as  springs  use  that  fall  and  windes  that  blow. 

Wherefore,  most  sacred  Spirit,  I  here  present 
For  me  and  all  my  fellows  praise  to  thee. 

And  just  it  is  that  I  should  pay  the  rent, 
Because  the  benefit  accrues  to  me. 

And  it  was  in  this  sense  that  elsewhere  he  likened 
the  priest  to  a  window  in  the  temple  wall,  ' '  a 
brittle  crazy  glass,"  through  which,  nevertheless, 
the  light  fell  upon  the  people  stained  with  holy 
images.  His  poems  he  called  wmdow-songs. 
Certainly  to  Walton  the  concern  ' '  with  the  small 
needs  of  his  own  soul  "  did  not  appear  to  be  an 
abuse  of  precious  talents.  Says  the  Life  :  "  And 
there,  by  that  inward  devotion  which  he  testified 
constantly  by  an  humble  behaviour  and  visible 
adoration,  he,  like  Joshua,  brought  not  only  his 
own   household    thus  to    serve    the   Lord,    but 


g6  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

brought  most  of  his  parishioners,  and  many  gen- 
tlemen in  the  neighbourhood,  constantly  to  make 
a  part  of  his  congregation  twice  a  day.  And  some 
of  the  meaner  sort  of  his  parish  did  so  love  and 
reverence  Mr.  Herbert  that  they  would  let  their 
plough  rest  when  Mr.  Herbert's  saints-bell  rung  to 
prayers,  that  they  might  also  offer  their  devotions 
to  God  with  him;  and  would  then  return  back  to 
their  plough.  And  his  most  holy  life  was  such 
that  it  begot  such  reverence  to  God,  and  to  him, 
that  they  thought  themselves  the  happier  when 
they  carried  Mr.  Herbert's  blessing  back  with 
them  to  their  labour." 

A  part  of  the  intense  individualism  of  Herbert's 
religion  during  these  last  years  was  no  doubt  due 
to  the  increasing  burden  of  ill  health.  Occasion- 
ally a  note  of  pure  bodily  pain  breaks  through  his 
song,  and  the  thought  of  the  inevitable  end  grew 
daily  more  insistent.  Death  is  a  thing  of  which 
we  have  become  ashamed.  We  huddle  it  up  and 
speak  of  it  with  averted  glance.  But  it  was  not 
always  so  ;  men  of  Herbert's  day  looked  upon  it 
as  the  solemn  consummation  of  life  and  prepared 
for  it  as  for  a  public  ceremony.  Read  Sir  Thomas 
Browne's  Letter  to  a  Friend,  and  see  how  he 
dwells  on  the  ' '  deliberate  and  creeping  progress 
into  the  grave. "  Or  go  not  so  far ;  stop  in  the 
eighteenth  century  and  read  the  letters  in  which 
Cowper  relates  the  passing  of  his  brother.  You 
will  find  nothing  comparable  to  this  in  the  liter- 
ature of  to-day  ;  the  very  word  is  almost  banished 


GEORGE  HERBERT  97 

from  our  books.  It  may  be  that  we  have  gained 
in  power  by  putting  away  from  us  the  thought  of 
this  paralysing  necessity,  yet  sometimes  I  wonder 
if  we  have  not  suflfered  an  equal  loss.  For  with 
Herbert,  at  least,  the  fairest  of  his  poems  were 
inspired  by  this  ever-present  thought.  A  very 
thrill  of  joy  leaps  through  such  lines  as  these  : 

What  wonders  shall  we  feel  when  we  shall  see 

Thy  full-ey'd  love ! 
When  thou  shalt  look  us  out  of  pain. 

Is  the  rapture  of  Dante,  lifted  from  sphere  to 
sphere  at  the  sight  of  Beatrice's  eyes,  finer  than 
this  When  thou  shalt  look  tis  out  of  painf  And 
death  is  the  theme  of  that  sweetest  song,  which 
no  one  who  writes  of  Herbert  can  aflford  to  omit : 

Sweet  day,  so  cool,  so  calm,  so  bright, 

The  bridall  of  the  earth  and  skie  ; 
The  dew  shall  weep  thy  fall  to  night, 
For  thou  must  die. 

Sweet  rose,  whose  hue  angrie  and  brave 

Bids  the  rash  gazer  wipe  his  eye  ; 
Thy  root  is  ever  in  its  grave, 

And  thou  must  die. 

Sweet  spring,  full  of  sweet  dayes  and  roses, 

A  box  where  sweets  compacted  lie ; 
My  musick  shows  ye  have  3'our  closes. 
And  all  must  die. 

Onely  a  sweet  and  vertuous  soul, 

Like  season'd  timber,  never  gives  ; 
But  though  the  whole  world  turn  to  coal, 
Then  chiefly  lives. 


98  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

Just  before  the  end  Herbert  gave  to  a  friend 
who  was  visiting  him  a  manuscript  book,  bid- 
ding him  deliver  it  to  Nicholas  Ferrar  to 
be  made  public  or  burned  as  that  gentleman 
thought  good.  It  was,  as  he  described  it,  a  pic- 
ture of  the  many  spiritual  conflicts  that  had 
passed  betwixt  God  and  his  soul,  being  the  small 
volume  of  verse  which  was  the  labour  and  the 
fruit  of  his  life.  There  is  much  to  censure  critic- 
ally in  the  work,  much  that  is  frigid  and  fantas- 
tic ;  but  at  its  best  the  note  is  rare  and  penetrating, 
with  the  tinkling  purity  of  a  silver  sacring  bell. 
Many  have  loved  the  book  as  a  companion  of  the 
closet,  and  many  still  cherish  it  for  its  human 
comfort ;  all  of  us  may  profit  from  its  pages  if  we 
can  learn  from  them  to  wind  ourselves  out  of  the 
vicious  fallacy  of  the  present,  and  to  make  our 
own  some  part  of  Herbert's  intimacy  with  divine 
things. 


KEATS 

In  its  pleasures  and  its  toils  the  case  of  the 
critic,  I  often  think,  is  not  unlike  that  of  the  ad- 
venturous traveller.  Every  author  into  whose 
life  in  turn  he  diverts  his  own  is  to  him  a  new 
voyage  of  exploration.  He  comes  back  laden 
with  memories,  whether  the  land  he  has  tra- 
versed be  one  in  the  highways  of  commerce  and 
already  trodden  by  many  feet,  or  an  island  almost 
forgotten  in  far-oflf  seas.  Cities  of  men  he  visits, 
and  walks  in  crowded  streets,  or  sits  by  sheltered 
hearths.  Again,  it  is  a  country  of  unpeopled  soli- 
tudes, where  things  of  loveliness  waylay  him,  or 
monstrous  forms  startle  and  affright.  There  are 
recollections  of  homely  comfort  to  reward  his  toil ; 
and  of  high  adventures,  as  when,  like  Balboa,  he 
stands  and  looks  out,  the  first  of  men,  over  the 
hifiuite  unknown  Pacific  ;  and  there  are  ways  of 
terror  where  he  wanders  alone  on  desolate  frozen 
coasts  and,  far  as  the  eye  can  reach,  sees  only 
ruinous  death.  All  these  visions  and  remembered 
emotions  he  carries  to  his  desk,  counting  himself 
blessed  if  some  happy  chance  of  language  or  some 
imusual  quickening  of  the  blood  shall  enable  him 
to  convey  to  others  though  it  be  but  a  small  part 
99 


lOO  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

of  his  experience.  That  good  fortune,  he  feels, 
with  all  noble  conquests,  is  reserved  for  the 
poets  : 

Much  have  I  travell'd  in  the  realms  of  gold, 

And  many  goodly  states  and  kingdoms  seen  ; 

Round  many  western  islands  have  I  been 
Which  bards  in  fealty  to  Apollo  hold. 
Oft  of  one  wide  expanse  had  I  been  told 

That  deep-brow'd  Homer  ruled  as  his  demesne ; 

Yet  did  I  never  breathe  its  pure  serene 
Till  I  heard  Chapman  speak  out  loud  and  bold : 
Then  felt  I  like  some  watcher  of  the  skies 

When  a  new  planet  swims  into  his  ken  ; 
Or  like  stout  Cortez  when  with  eagle  eyes 

He  stared  at  the  Pacific — and  all  his  men 
Look'd  at  each  other  with  a  wild  surmise — 

Silent,  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 

It  is  the  sonnet  that  to  most  people  probably 
comes  first  to  mind  when  Keats  is  named  and  his 
destiny  remembered.  There  is  about  it  the  golden 
flush  and  wonder  of  youth — it  was  written  in  his 
twentieth  year — and  one  catches  in  it  also,  or 
seems  to  catch,  a  certain  quickness  of  breath 
which  forebodes  the  rapture  so  soon  quenched. 
The  inspiration  of  unsoiled  nature  and  of  Eng- 
land's clear-voiced  early  singers  is  here  mingled 
as  in  no  other  of  our  poets.  And  especially  this 
inheritance  of  the  Elizabethan  age  rediscov- 
ered in  a  later  century  will  have  a  new  signifi- 
cance to  any  one  who  has  just  gone  through  the 


KEATS  lOI 

poems  in  the  volume  edited  by  Mr.  B.  de  Selin- 
court.^ 

There  is  a  good  deal  to  commend  in  this  schol- 
arly edition  of  Keats  ;  the  text  has  been  prepared 
with  extreme  accuracy,  and  the  notes,  properly 
placed  at  the  end  of  the  book,  are  thorough  and 
apposite.  Mr.  de  Selincourt's  interest  has  lain 
more  particularly  in  the  study  of  sources,  and 
Keats,  among  the  most  derivative  and  at  the 
same  time  original  of  Knglish  poets,  offered  him 
here  a  rich  field.  For  one  thing,  he  has  exploded 
the  silly  myth  of  the  L,empriere.  To  that  diction- 
ary (still  a  serviceable  book,  be  it  said,  in  its  own 
way)  Keats  no  doubt  owed  his  acquaintance  with 
many  details  of  antiquity,  but  most  of  his  infor- 
mation and  all  the  colour  and  movement  that  made 
of  those  legends  a  living  inspiration  he  got  from 
the  translations  of  Chapman  and  Sandys  and  from 
the  innumerable  allusions  in  Spenser  and  the 
other  great  Elizabethans.  One  might  have  sur- 
mised as  much  from  his  sonnet  to  Chapman's 
Homer  without  waiting  for  the  present  editor's 
erudition.  To  call  him  a  Greek,  as  Shelley  did 
explicitly  and  as  Matthew  Arnold  once  did  by 
implication,  is  to  miss  the  mark.  "Keats  was  no 
scholar,"  says  Mr.  de  Selincourt  aptly,  "  and  of 
the  literature  in  which  the  Greek  spirit  found  true 
expression  he  could  know  nothing.     But  just  as 

1  77/1?  Poems  of  John  Keats.  Edited  with  an  Introduc- 
tion and  Notes  by  E.  de  Selincourt.  New  York:  Dodd, 
Mead,  &  Co.,  1905. 


mm 


I02  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

it  was  through  his  devotion  to  Spenser  that  he 
became  a  poet,  so  was  it  through  his  kinship, 
both  in  spirit  and  taste,  with  the  Elizabethans, 
that  he  became  the  poet  of  ancient  Greece." 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  the  essential  kinship 
of  Keats  to  "  The  fervid  choir  that  lifted  up  a 
noise  of  harmony,"  as  he  called  them,  rests  upon 
something  even  deeper  than  similarity  of  language 
and  poetic  method  or  than  "  natural  magic, ' '  that  it 
goes  down  to  that  faculty  of  vision  in  his  mind 
which,  like  theirs,  beheld  the  marriage  of  the 
ideas  of  beauty  and  death.  As  an  editor  con- 
cerned with  the  minutiae  of  the  poet's  manner, 
Mr.  de  S^lincourt  may  well  be  pardoned  for  over- 
looking this  more  essential  relationship  ;  his  ser- 
vices are  sufficiently  great  after  every  deduction. 
It  is  not  a  small  thing,  for  instance,  to  find  in  the 
Glossary  a  careful  tabulation  of  the  sources  from 
which  Keats  drew  his  extraordinary  vocabulary, 
and  from  the  first  word,  "a-cold,"  to  see  how 
constantly  he  borrowed  from  Shakespeare  and 
Milton  and  the  writers  that  lie  between,  and  how 
deliberately  he  sought  to  echo  "that  large  utter- 
ance of  the  early  Gods."  The  curious  thing  is 
that  in  the  end  all  this  borrowing  should  produce 
the  impression  of  a  fine  spontaneity.  Just  as  we 
are  discovering  more  and  more  in  the  spacious- 
ness of  the  Elizabethans  a  literary  inspiration 
from  foreign  lands,  so  the  freedom  of  diction  in 
Keats  was  in  large  measure  the  influence  of  a 
remote   age — which    may   be    taken   as   another 


KEATS  103 

lesson  in  the  nature  of  originality.  The  effect  is 
as  if  the  language  were  undergoing  a  kind  of 
rejuvenation  and  no  dulness  of  long  custom  lay- 
between  words  and  objects.  Wordsworth's  en- 
deavour to  introduce  the  speech  of  daily  use  is  in 
comparison  the  mere  adopting  of  another  artifice. 
It  is  scarcely  necessary  to  add  that  this  sponta- 
neity in  a  mind  so  untrained  as  Keats's  often  fell 
into  license  and  barbarism.  From  the  days  of 
the  first  reviewers  his  ill-formed  compound  terms 
and  his  other  solecisms  have,  and  quite  rightly, 
been  ridiculed  and  repudiated.  Sometimes,  in- 
deed, his  super-grammatical  creations  have  a 
strange  quality  of  genius  that  rebukes  criticism 
to  modesty.     Thus  in  the  familiar  lines  : 

As  when,  upon  a  tranced  summer-night, 
Those  green-robed  senators  of  might)-  woods, 
Tall  oaks,  branch-charniM  by  the  earnest  stars, 
Dream,  and  so  dream  all  night  without  a  stir. 
Save  from  one  gradual  solitary  gust 
Which  comes  upon  the  silence,  and  dies  oflF, 
As  if  the  ebbing  air  had  but  one  wave — 

it  is  not  easy  to  justify  "  branch-charmM  "  by 
any  common  linguistic  process  ;  and  yet  who  does 
not  feel  that  the  spell  of  the  passage,  the  very 
mystery  of  its  utter  beauty,  is  concentrated  in 
that  one  lawless  word  ?  It  is  the  keystone  of  a 
perfect  arch.  By  a  stroke  of  rarer  insight  Keats, 
when  he  came  to  rewrite  the  scene  for  the  later 
Hyperion^  left  that  phrase  untouched,  though  he 


I04  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

changed,  and  in  changing  marred,  nearly  all  the 
rest.  But  if  occasionally  these  unlicensed  expres- 
sions add  to  the  magic  of  his  style,  more  often 
they  are  merely  annoying  blemishes.  There  is 
no  beauty  in  such  a  phrase  as  "  unslumbrous 
night,"  to  take  the  first  words  that  occur,  no 
force  in  "most  drowningly  doth  sing,"  and  his 
elision  (which  occurs  more  than  once)  of  perhaps 
into  p'rhaps  is  of  a  sort  to  make  even  a  hardened 
reader  wince. 

The  fact  is,  Keats  might  learn  from  the  Kliza- 
bethans  almost  every  element  of  style  except  taste, 
and  here  where  he  most  needed  guidance  they 
seemed  rather  to  sanction  his  lawlessness.  But 
there  was  a  difiference  between  their  circumstances 
and  his.  When  a  language  is  young  and  ex- 
panding, the  absence  of  restraining  taste  is  not  so 
much  felt,  and  liberty  is  a  principle  of  growth  ; 
whereas  at  a  later  stage  the  same  freedom  leads 
often  to  mere  eccentricity  and  vulgarisms.  So  it  is 
that  in  Keats's  language  we  are  often  obliged  to 
distinguish  between  a  true  Elizabethan  sponta- 
neity and  a  spurious  imitation  that  smacks  too 
much  of  his  London  surroundings.  We  resent 
justly  the  review  of  Eyidyniion  in  Blackwood' s  in 
which  the  author  was  labelled  as  belonging  to 
"  the  Cockney  School  of  Poetry  ";  we  take  almost 
as  a  personal  aflFront  the  reviewer's  coarse  de- 
rision: "  So  back  to  the  shop,  Mr.  John,  stick  to 
'plasters,  pills,  ointment  boxes'  ";  yet  there  is  a 
hideous  particle  of  truth  in  the  insult  which  will 


KEATS  105 

forever  cling  to  Keats' s  name.  Great  poets  have 
come  out  of  I^ondon,  but  only  Keats  among  tlie 
immortals  can  be  pointed  at  as  "  cockney." 

There  is,  in  fact,  something  disconcerting  in 
the  circumstances  of  the  poet's  early  life.  He 
was  born  in  London  in  1795.  His  father,  a  west- 
countryman,  probably  with  Celtic  blood  in  his 
veins,  was  employed  in  a  livery  stable,  of  which 
he  afterwards  became  manager,  marrying  the 
owner's  daughter.  He  died  when  John  was  nine 
years  old.  The  mother  soon  married  a  Mr.  Wil- 
liam Rawlings,  also  stable-keeper,  who  apparently 
had  succeeded  her  first  husband  in  the  Moorgate 
business.  She  lived  but  a  few  years,  and  the 
family  of  children,  of  which  John  was  the  eldest, 
were  left  orphans.  There  was  some  money,  and 
though  towards  the  end  pecuniary  troubles  came 
upon  him,  Keats  was  in  this  respect  more  fortu- 
nate than  many  others ;  he  never  had  to  waste 
his  powers  by  writing  for  bread.  Between  the 
years  of  1806  and  18 10  he  attended  a  fairly  good 
school  kept  by  the  Rev.  John  Clarke  at  Enfield. 
After  this  he  was  apprenticed  for  five  years  to  a 
surgeon  at  Edmonton,  and  then  went,  as  the 
phrase  is,  to  walk  the  London  hospitals.  Mean- 
while he  had  been  studying  other  things  besides 
the  human  anatomy.  Charles  Cowden  Clarke, 
the  son  of  his  schoolmaster,  one  day  memorable 
in  the  annals  of  literature,  had  read  Spenser's 
Epithalamium  to  him,  and  lent  him  The  Faerie 
Queen  to  take  home.     It  was  letting  the  wind  in 


I06  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

Upon  a  sleeping  fire.  Said  a  friend  in  after  days: 
"Though  born  to  be  a  poet,  he  was  ignorant 
of  his  birthright  until  he  had  completed  his 
eighteenth  year.  It  was  The  Faerie  Queen 
that  awakened  his  genius.  In  Spenser's  fairy- 
land he  was  enchanted,  breathed  in  a  new  world, 
and  became  another  being  ;  till  enamoured  of  the 
stanza,  he  attempted  to  imitate  it,  and  succeeded. 
This  account  of  the  sudden  development  of  his 
poetic  powers  I  first  received  from  his  brothers 
and  afterwards  from  himself.  This,  his  earliest 
attempt,  the  Imitation  of  Spenser,  is  in  his  first 
volume  of  poems,  and  it  is  peculiarly  interesting 
to  those  acquainted  with  his  history." 

There  was  no  more  walking  of  hospitals  for 
Keats.  His  first  volume  oi  Poems  was  published 
in  1817,  with  the  significant  motto  from  Spenser  : 

What  more  felicity  can  fall  to  creature 
Than  to  enjoy  delight  with  liberty. 

It  contains  the  first  project  of  Endy?mo7i,  the 
Epistles,  in  which  Keats  unfurls  the  flag  of  rebel- 
lion against  poetic  "  rules,"  and  a  group  of  son- 
nets, including  that  on  Chapman'' s  Homer.  The 
next  year  appeared  the  true  Ejidymion,  which 
won  him  the  abuse  of  the  reviewers  and  the 
admiration  of  Shelley.  Only  two  years  later,  in 
1820,  when  he  was  not  yet  twenty-five,  there  . 
followed  that  wonderful  book  which  has  assured 
to  him  the  passionate  desire  of  his  life,  a  place 


KEATS  107 

"among  the  English  Poets."  No  poet  of  Eng- 
land at  that  age,  barely  four  or  five  at  any  age, 
had  published  such  works  as  these, — La??iia,  Isa- 
bella, The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  Hyperioii,  and  the 
great  Odes.  What  else  he  wrote  was  only  to  be 
printed  posthumously,  including,  among  other 
poems,  the  revised  Fall  of  Hyperion,  the  exquisite 
fragment  on  The  Eve  of  Saint  Mark,  the  haunting 
ballad  of  La  Belle  Dame  sans  A/erci,  and  the 
Dramas,  Over  some  of  this  later  work  there 
seems  to  be  a  flush  of  hectic  impatience,  the 
creeping  on  of  that  dread  which  he  had  expressed 
in  a  sonnet,  written  indeed  as  early  as  18 18,  but 
not  published  until  after  his  death : 

When  I  have  fears  that  I  may  cease  to  be 

Before  my  pea  has  glean'tl  my  teeming  brain, 
Before  high-piled  books,  in  charact'ry, 

Hold  like  full  garners  the  fuU-ripen'd  grain  ; 
When  I  behold,  upon  the  night's  starr'd  face, 

Huge  cloudy  symbols  of  a  high  romance, 
And  think  that  I  may  never  live  to  trace 

Their  shadows,  with  the  magic  hand  of  chance  ; 
And  when  I  feel,  fair  creature  of  an  hour  ! 

That  I  shall  never  look  upon  thee  more, 
Never  have  relish  in  the  faery  power 

Of  unreflecting  love  ! — then  on  the  shore 
Of  the  wide  world  I  stand  alone,  and  think. 
Till  Love  and  Fame  to  nothingness  do  sink. 

It  expresses  the  ever-present  fear  of  his  brief  life, 
but  it  contains  also,  at  the  close,  the  nearest 
approach  in  Keats  to  that  profounder  vision  of 
disillusion  which  separates  the  Elizabethans  from 


I08  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

him ;  it  calls  to  mind  what  are,  I  think,  the 
greatest  lines  of  Keats' s  Italian  contemporary, 
Leopardi : 

lo  quelle 
Infinite  silenzio  a  questa  voce 
Vo  comparando  :  e  mi  sovvien  1'  eterno, 
E  le  morte  stagioni,  e  la  presente 
E  viva,  e  il  suon  di  lei.     Cosl  tra  questa 
Immensitd.  s^  annega  ilpensier  mio; 
Eil  naufragamt'  i  dolce  in  questo  mare. 

(I  anon 

That  infinite  silence  witli  this  voice  compare: 
And  I  remember  the  eternal  one, 

The  seasons  of  the  dead,  and  this  of  care 
About  us  and  its  sound.     So  as  I  wonder. 
My  thought  in  this  immensity  sinks  U7ider; 

And  shipwreck  in  that  sea  is  sweet  to  bear.) 

But  Keats  owed  to  Cowden  Clarke  something 
more  than  his  intellectual  awakening ;  it  was 
through  the  same  friend  he  was  introduced  to  the 
circle  of  literary  and  artistic  men  in  London  who 
supported  and  stimulated  him  in  his  work.  Chief 
among  these  in  his  early  impressionable  years 
were  Leigh  Hunt  and  the  half-mad  painter,  B.  R. 
Haydon,  and  unfortunately  both  of  these  advisers 
reinforced  the  natural  qualities  of  his  mind  with 
what  may  be  called  a  kind  of  bastard,  or  cockney, 
Elizabethanism.  It  is  painful  to  follow  that  influ- 
ence, as  so  much  in  Keats' s  life  is  painftil.  In 
his  maturity  he  could  see  the  weakness  of  these 
friends  and  speak  of  them  dispassionately  enough. 
Of  Leigh  Hunt  he  wrote  to  his  brother  George, 


KEATS  109 

then  in  America:  ^'^ Hunt  does  one  harm  by  7nak- 
ing  fine  things  petty  and  beautiful  things  hatefid. 
Through  him  I  am  indiflferent  to  Mozart,  I  care 
not  for  white  Busts — and  many  a  glorious  thing 
when  associated  with  him  becomes  a  nothing." 
So  much  Keats  could  see,  but  never,  even  in  his 
greatest  works,  could  he  quite  free  himself  from 
that  malign  influence;  for  it  had  laid  hold  of  a 
corresponding  tendency  in  his  own  nature.  He 
was  never  quite  able  to  distinguish  between  the 
large  liberties  of  the  strong  and  the  jaunty  flip- 
pancy of  the  underbred  ;  his  passion  for  beauty 
could  never  entirely  save  him  from  mawkish  pret- 
tinesses,  and  his  idea  of  love  was  too  often  a  mere 
sickly  sweetness.  Never  after  the  days  of  En- 
dymion,  perhaps,  did  he  write  anything  quite  in 
the  character  of  "  Those  lips,  O  slippery  blisses"; 
but  even  in  the  volume  of  1820  he  could  not  be 
sure  of  himself.  There  are  too  many  passages 
there  like  these  lines  in  Lamia  : 

He,  sick  to  lose 
The  amorous  promise  of  her  lone  complain, 
Swoon'd,  murmuring  of  love,  and  pale  with  pain. 

Not  a  little  of  this  uncertainty  of  taste  was  due  to 
Leigh  Hunt. 

And  in  the  same  way  Haydon  confirmed  Keats 
on  another  side  of  his  cockney  Elizabethan  ism. 
Haydon  himself  was  a  man  of  vast  and  undisci- 
plined, almost  insane,  enthusiasms,  and  he 
undoubtedly   did   much   to  keep  the  ambitious 


no  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

longings  of  Keats  in  a  state  of  morbid  fermenta- 
tion. It  would  be  a  curious  study  to  trace  the 
friendship  and  humorous  rupture  of  these  two 
men  in  Keats' s  letters  and  in  those  journals  of 
Haydon  where  so  many  of  the  geniuses  of  the  day 
are  presented  in  startling  undress.  At  first  all  is 
smoothness.  Keats  tells  Haydon  in  a  letter  "that 
there  are  three  things  to  rejoice  at  in  this  Age 
— The  Excursion,  Your  Pictures,  and  Hazlitt's 
depth  of  Taste"— poor  Hazlitt  being  supplanted 
in  a  sonnet  on  the  same  theme  by  Hunt, 

He  of  the  rose,  the  violet,  the  spring. 
The  social  smile,  the  chain  for  Freedom's  sake. 

On  his  part  the  painter  describes  his  friend  as  the 
ideal  poet;  "Keats  was  the  only  man  I  ever 
met,"  he  wrote,  "  who  seemed  and  looked  con- 
scious of  a  high  calling,  except  Wordsworth." 
Then  it  is  a  letter  from  Haydon: 

I  love  you  like  my  own  brother.  Beware,  for  God's 
sake,  of  the  delusions  and  sophistications  that  are 
ripping  up  the  talents  and  morality  of  our  friend  !  [A 
kindly  allusion  to  Hunt]  ...  Do  not  despair.  Collect 
incident,  study  character,  read  Shakespeare,  and  trust  in 
Providence,  and  you  will  do,  you  must. 

Which  brings  from  Keats  this  exalted  reply : 

I  know  no  one  but  you  who  can  be  fully  sensible  of  the 
turmoil  and  anxiety,  the  sacrifice  of  all  what  [sic]  is  called 
comfort,  the  readiness  to  measure  time  by  what  is  done 
and  to  die  in  six  hours  could  plans  be  brou<;ht  to  con- 
clusions—the  looking  upon  the  Sun,  the  Moon,  the  Stars, 


KEATS  III 

the  Earth  and  its  contents,  as  materials  to  form  greater 
things — that  is  to  say,  ethereal  things— but  here  I  am 
talking  like  a  Madman— greater  things  than  our  Creator 
himselt  made! ! 

lyater  a  coolness  sets  in,  occasioned  by  a  common 
habit  of  asking  for  money — Haydon,  indeed,  was 
thought  by  some  to  have  sat  to  Charles  Lamb  as 
a  model  for  Ralph  Bigod,  Esq.,  captain  of  the 
mighty  "men  who  borrow" — and  at  the  last  a 
mutual  estrangement.  On  hearing  of  Keats's 
death  Haydon  summed  up  his  character  thus: 

A  genius  more  purely  poetical  never  existed.  In 
fireside  conversation  he  was  weak  and  inconsequent,  but 
he  was  in  his  glory  in  the  fields.  .  .  .  He  was  the 
most  unselfish  of  human  creatures;  unadapted  to  the 
world,  he  cared  not  for  himself,  and  put  himself  to 
any  inconvenience  for  the  sake  of  his  friends.  He  was 
haughty,  and  had  a  fierce  hatred  of  rank;  but  he  had  a 
kind  heart,  and  would  have  shared  his  fortune  with  any 
one  who  wanted  it.  [Keats,  by  the  way,  had  quarrelled 
with  Haydon  over  the  repayment  of  a  loan.]  He  had  an 
exquisite  sense  of  humour,  and  too  refined  a  notion  of 
female  purity  to  bear  the  little  sweet  arts  of  love  with 
patience.  ...  He  began  life  full  of  hopes,  fury, 
impetuous,  and  ungovernable,  expecting  the  world  to  fall 
at  once  beneath  his  powers.  Unable  to  bear  the  sneers  of 
ignorance  nor  the  attacks  of  envy,  he  began  to  despond, 
and  flew  to  dissipation  as  a  relief.  For  six  weeks  he  was 
scarcely  sober,  and— to  show  what  a  man  does  to  gratify 
his  appetites  when  they  get  the  better  of  him— once 
covered  his  tongue  and  throat  as  far  as  he  could  vdth 
cayenne  pepper,  in  order  to  appreciate  the  "delicious 
coldness  of  claret  in  all  its  glory  "—his  own  expression. 


112  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

I  should  like  to  be  as  sure  as  are  some  others,  of 
Keats' s  own  time  and  of  the  present,  that  this  is 
a  distorted  view  of  the  man's  failings  ;  they  may 
well  be  somewhat  exaggerated,  yet  Haydon  had 
for  the  most  part  a  wicked  penetration  into  char- 
acter, and  his  words  here  ring  remarkably  true. 
Nor  is  it  the  only  place  in  which  he  asserts  that 
Keats  was  beaten  down  by  the  cruelty  of  the 
reviewers,  leading  us  to  think  that  Byron's  cyni- 
cal rhyme  on  the  "  fiery  particle"  "  snufied  out 
by  an  article  "  may  have  contained  just  a  grain  of 
truth.  And  as  for  the  cayenne  pepper,  is  it  much 
more  than  a  childish  illustration  of  the  thought 
repeated  in  many  a  verse — to  "  burst  Joy's  grape 
against  his  palate  fine"?  After  all  this  is  but 
the  frailer,  and,  so  to  speak,  ephemeral,  side  of 
Keats  ;  unfortunately,  his  associations  were  not 
of  a  kind  to  help  him  to  overcome  the  initial  lack 
of  training,  by  correcting  his  flaws  of  taste  and 
egotistic  enthusiasm,  and  by  purging  what  I 
have  called  his  Elizabethan  spontaneity  of  its 
cockney  dross.  As  Wordsworth  wrote  in  his 
patronising  way:  "How  is  Keats?  He  is  a 
youth  of  promise,  too  great  for  the  sorry  com- 
pany he  keeps." 

The  wonder  of  it  is  that  he  grew  so  rapidly, 
and  that  so  large  a  part  of  the  volume  of  1820 
should  have  attained  the  true  and  lofty  liberties 
of  the  spirit.  In  many  aspects  he  stands  curi- 
ously apart  from  his  age.  One  feels  this  in  his 
attitude  toward  nature,  which  in  his  verse  is  still 


KEATS  1 1 3 

unsubjected  to  the  destinies  of  mankind.  With 
Wordsworth  and  Shelley,  even  with  Bj^ron,  some 
thought  of  man's  sufferings  and  aspirations  rises 
between  the  poet's  eye  and  the  vision  of  Nature, 
but  with  Keats  she  is  still  a  great  primeval  force, 
inhuman  and  self-centred,  beautiful,  and  sublime, 
and  cruel,  by  turns.  One  catches  this  note  at 
times  in  the  earlier  poems,  as  in  the  largeness  and 
aloofness  of  such  a  picture  as  this: 

On  a  lone  winter  evening,  when  the  frost 
Has  wrought  a  silence. 

It  speaks  with  greater  clearness  in  the  later 
poems — in  the  elfin  call  of  the  nightingale's  song, 

The  same  that  hath 

Charm'd  magic  casements,  opening  on  the  foam 

Of  perilous  seas,  in  faery  lands  forlorn  ; 

and  in  the  imagery,  calling  us  back  to  times 
before  man's  feebler  creation,  of  that  "  sad  place  " 
where 

Crag  jutting  forth  to  crag,  and  rocks,  that  seemed 

Ever  as  if  just  rising  from  a  sleep. 

Forehead  to  forehead  held  their  monstrous  horns. 

One  has  the  feeling  that  the  poet's  mind  is  in 
immediate  contact  with  the  object  described,  and 
the  imagination  of  the  reader  is  shocked  from  self- 
complacency  by  a  kind  of  sympathetic  surprise. 
It  is  at  bottom  a  mark  of  that  unperverted  and 
•antheorised  sincerity  whose  presence  condones  so 
many  faults  in  the  Elizabethan  writers,  and  whose 
8 


114  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

absence  mars  so  many  brilliant  qualities  in  the 
contemporaries  of  Keats. 

But  more  particularly  I  see  this  backward- 
reaching  kinship  of  Keats  in  his  constant  associ- 
ation of  the  ideas  of  beauty  (or  love)  and  death. 
In  the  dramatists  that  association  attained  its  cli- 
max in  the  broken  cry  of  Webster,  which  rings 
and  sobs  like  a  paroxysm  of  jealous  rage  against 
the  all-embracing  power: 

Cover  her  face  ;  mine  eyes  dazzle  :  she  died  young, — 

but  everywhere  in  them  it  is  present  or  implied. 
Of  their  thirst  for  beauty  there  is  no  need  to  give 
separate  examples ;  uor  yet  of  their  constant 
brooding  on  the  law  of  mutability.  They  cannot 
get  away  from  the  remembrance  of  life's  brevity: 

On  pain  of  death,  let  no  man  name  death  to  me : 
It  is  a  word  infinitely  terrible. 

But  for  the  tedium  of  repetition  one  might  go 
through  Keats's  volume  of  1820,  and  show  how 
completely  the  pattern  of  that  book  is  wrought 
on  the  same  background  of  ideas.  Perhaps  the 
most  striking  illustration  may  be  found  in  those 
two  stanzas  which  relate  how  Isabella  in  the 
lonely  forest  unearths  the  body  of  her  buried 
lover: 

She  gazed  into  the  fresh-thrown  mould,  as  though 
One  glance  did  fully  all  its  secrets  tell ; 

Clearly  she  saw,  as  other  eyes  would  know 
Pale  limbs  at  bottom  of  a  crystal  well ; 

Upon  the  murderous  spot  she  seem'd  to  grow, 


KEATS  115 

Like  to  a  native  lily  of  the  dell: 
Then  with  lier  knife,  all  sudden,  she  began 
To  dig  more  fervently  than  misers  can. 

Soon  she  turn'd  up  a  soiled  glove,  whereon 
Her  silk  had  play'd  in  purple  phantasies. 

She  kiss'd  it  with  a  lip  more  chill  than  stone, 
And  put  it  in  her  bosom,  where  it  dries 

And  freezes  utterly  unto  the  bone 
Those  dainties  made  to  still  an  infant's  cries: 

Than  'gan  she  work  again;  nor  stay'd  her  care, 

But  to  throw  back  at  times  her  veiling  hair. 

Every  age  has  its  peculiar  adaptation  of  this 
universal  theme,  and  chants  in  its  own  way  the 
everlasting  hymeneal  of  beauty  and  death  ;  but 
in  these  stanzas  there  is  something  that  calls  the 
mind  back  to  the  poetry  of  Webster  and  Ford, 
This  poignant  meeting  of  the  shapes  of  loveliness 
and  decay  is  the  inheritance  of  the  middle  ages, 
which  in  England  more  especially  was  carried 
over  into  the  new  birth  and  made  gorgeous  with 
all  the  cunning  splendours  of  the  Renaissance. 
Keats  did  not  learn  his  art  from  the  real  antiquity. 
The  Greeks,  too,  had  their  version  of  the  theme, 
and  in  the  story  of  Persephone  and  Dis  gave  it  its 
most  perfect  mythological  form.  But  its  interest 
with  them  lay  primarily  in  its  ethical  associa- 
tions, and  the  Powers  of  beauty  and  death  were 
minor  agents  only  in  the  great  moral  drama 
moved  by  the  supreme  unwritten  laws.  No  Greek 
could  have  so  gloated  over  the  purely  physical 
contrast  of  ideas — "A  skull  upon  a  mat  of  roses 


Il6  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

lying" — or  put  into  it  the  same  hungering  emo- 
tion, as  did  Keats  in  these  stanzas  that  follow  the 
forest  scene  in  Isabella: 

In  anxious  secrecy  they  took  it  home. 

And  then  the  prize  was  all  for  Isabel : 
She  calm'd  its  wild  hair  with  a  golden  comb. 

And  all  around  each  eye's  sepulchral  cell 
Pointed  each  fringed  lash ;  the  smeared  loam 

With  tears,  as  chilly  as  a  dripping  well, 
She  drench'd  away : — and  still  she  comb'd,  and  kept 
Sighing  all  day — and  still  she  kiss'd,  and  wept. 

Then  in  a  silken  scarf, — sweet  with  the  dews 

Of  precious  flowers  pluck'd  in  Araby, 
And  divine  liquids  come  with  odorous  ooze 

Through  the  cold  serpent-pipe  refreshfully, — 
She  wrapp'd  it  up ;  and  for  its  tomb  did  choose 

A  garden-pot,  wherein  she  laid  it  by. 
And  cover'd  it  with  mould,  and  o'er  it  set 
Sweet  Basil,  which  her  tears  kept  ever  wet. 

And  she  forgot  the  stars,  the  moon,  and  sun. 
And  she  forgot  the  blue  above  the  trees, 

And  she  forgot  the  dells  where  waters  run. 
And  she  forgot  the  chilly  autumn  breeze ; 

She  had  no  knowledge  when  the  day  was  done. 
And  the  new  morn  she  saw  not:  but  in  peace 

Hung  over  her  sweet  Basil  evermore. 

And  moisten'd  it  with  tears  unto  the  core. 

To  see  how  far  Keats  is  from  the  spirit  of  Greece, 
we  need  only  turn  from  this  last  stanza  to  the  scene 
of  Antigone,  in  the  play  of  Sophocles,  treading 
the  last  road  for  the  love  of  one  dead,  and  look- 
ing for  the  last  time  on  the  light  of  the  sun  and 


KEATS  117 

never  again  any  more.  She,  too,  bids  farewell  to 
the  bright  things  of  the  world,  the  springs  of 
Dirce  and  the  grove  of  Thebes,  but  it  is  not  in  the 
language  of  Isabella. 

The  same  music  wrung  from  the  transience  of 
lovely  things  runs  like  a  monotone  through  the 
other  poems  of  Keats' s  great  volume,  but  in  a 
diflferent  key.  The  incongruity  (as  it  appears,  yet 
it  lies  at  the  bottom  of  human  thought)  intrudes 
even  into  The  Eve  of  St.  Agnes,  with  the  opening 
image  of  the  benumbed  beadsman  among  the 
sculptured  dead  and  with  the  closing  return  to 
the  same  contrast.  In  the  Odes  it  is  subdued  to 
a  musing  regret — heard  pensively  in  the  Ode  to  a 
Nigh  ti?igale: 

Darkling  I  listen;  and,  for  many  a  time 

I  have  been  half  in  love  with  easeful  Death, 
Call'd  him  soft  names  in  many  a  mused  rhyme, 
To  take  into  the  air  my  quiet  breath ; 

Now  more  than  ever  seems  it  rich  to  die, 
To  cease  upon  the  midnight  with  no  pain, 
While  thou  art  pouring  forth  thy  soul  abroad 
In  such  an  ecstasy ! 
Still  wouldst  thou  sing,  and  I  have  ears  in  vain — 
To  thy  high  requiem  become  a  sod ; — 

Speaking  with  a  still  more  chastened  beauty  in  the 
Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  : 

Heard  melodies  are  sweet,  but  those  unheard 
Are  sweeter;  therefore,  ye  soft  pipes,  play  on; 

Not  to  the  sensual  ear,  but,  more  endear'd, 
Pipe  to  the  spirit  ditties  of  no  tone : 


Il8  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Fair  youth,  beneath  the  trees,  thou  canst  not  leave 

Thy  song,  nor  ever  can  those  trees  be  bare ; 

Bold  Lover,  never,  never  canst  thou  kiss, 

Though  winning  near  the  goal — yet,  do  not  grieve; 

She  cannot  fade,  though  thou  hast  not  thy  bliss. 

For  ever  wilt  thou  love,  and  she  be  fair! — 

Uttered   with  greater  poignancy   in   the    Ode  on 

Mela7icholy : 

She  dwells  with  Beauty — Beauty  that  must  die  ; 

And  Joy,  whose  hand  is  ever  at  his  lips 
Bidding  adieu;  and  aching  Pleasure  nigh, 

Turning  to  poison  while  the  bee-mouth  sips. 

It  is  the  secret,  for  those  who  can  read  that 
mystery,  of  what  is  to  many  his  most  perfect 
work,  the  ballad  of  La  Belle  Dame  Sans  Merci. 

From  these  ideal  poems  one  turns  naturally  to 
the  letters  in  which  the  fever  and  unrest,  the 
glimpses  of  philosophy,  and  the  broken  hopes 
of  Keats' s  actual  life  are  expressed  with  such 
pathetic  earnestness.  The  picture  that  results  is 
of  a  strong  man  fighting  against  what  he  calls, 
with  some  self-depreciation,  "a  horrid  Morbidity 
of  Temperament."  There  is  much  to  lament  in 
this  revelation  never  meant  for  the  public ;  but  in 
the  end  the  sense  of  the  man's  greatness,  the  feel- 
ingof  his  reliance  ou  the  divine  call,  outweighs  the 
impression  of  his  painful  susceptibility,  and  of  his 
struggles  to  free  himself  from  "the  mire  of  a  bad 
reputation."  He  may  write  on  one  day:  "  My 
name  with  the  literary  fashionables  is  vulgar,  I  am 
a  weaver-boy  to  them,  a  tragedy  would  lift  me  out 


KEATS  119 

of  this  mess";  but  the  truer  Keats  is  to  be  found 
in  his  moments  of  proud  independence:  "lvalue 
more  the  privilege  of  seeing  great  things  in  lone- 
liness than  the  fame  of  a  Prophet,"  Great thmgs 
in  lonelhicss!  These  were  to  him,  as  almost 
every  page  of  the  letters  would  prove,  the  mighty 
abstract  Idea  of  Beauty  and  the  ever-present  con- 
sciousness of  death.  The  pity  of  it  is  that  these 
relentless  powers  should  have  passed  for  him  from 
the  realm  of  reflection  to  the  coarse  realities  of  life, 
and  that  the  experience  of  his  few  years  (they  were 
only  twenty-five)  should  have  been  torn  by  them 
as  by  a  warring  destiny.  It  was  inevitable  that 
this  contention  should  take  the  form  of  love;  nay, 
from  the  beginning,  in  his  flippant,  half-frightened 
allusions  to  the  other  sex,  one  feels  that  he  is  lay- 
ing himself  open  to  the  recrimination  of  the  deity. 
"I  am  certain,"  he  says,  "I  have  not  a  right  feel- 
ing toward  women";  and  again,  with  a  kind  of 
foreboding,  he  avows  that  his  idea  of  beauty 
"stifles  the  more  divided  and  minute  domestic 
happiness."  Through  all  the  correspondence  his 
thought  seems  to  be  leaping  on  as  if  pursued  by 
a  dreaded  Necessity;  one  hears  the  footsteps  of  the 
spurned  goddess  behind  him.  So,  he  was  over- 
taken at  last,  and  his  brief  story  was  made 
another  example  of  the  ways  of  Nemesis.  The 
letters  in  which  he  pours  out  the  agony  of  his 
love  for  Fanny  Brawne  resemble  Hazlitt's  Liber 
Amoris  more  than  anything  else  in  literature. 
They  have  the  same  uncontrolled  passion,  and  the 


I20  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

same  unfortunate  note  of  vulgarity,  due  not  so 
much  to  the  exuberance  of  his  emotion  as  to  the 
lack  of  any  corresponding  force  in  the  woman. 
The  flaccidity  of  her  temperament  deprives  the 
episode  of  tragic  ideahty,  and  lowers  it  to  the 
common  things  of  the  street.  It  even  changes 
his  master-vision  to  something  approaching  a 
sickly  sentimentalism.  "I  have  two  luxuries  to 
brood  over  in  my  walks,"  he  writes,  "your  Love- 
liness and  the  hour  of  my  death.  O  that  I  could 
have  possession  of  them  both  in  the  same  min- 
ute." It  helped  to  kill  the  poet  in  him,— save  for 
that  last  sonnet,  his  wild  swan-song,  written  on 
his  journey  to  Rome  and  a  Roman  grave: 

Bright  star !  would  I  were  steadfast  as  thou  art— 

Not  in  lone  splendour  hung  aloft  the  night, 
And  watching,  with  eternal  lids  apart. 

Like  Nature's  patient,  sleepless  Eremite, 
The  moving  waters  at  their  priestlike  task 

Of  pure  ablution  round  earth's  human  shores, 
Or  gazing  on  the  new  soft  fallen  mask 

Of  snow  upon  the  mountains  and  the  moors — 
No— yet  still  steadfast,  still  unchangeable, 

Pillow'd  upon  my  fair  love's  ripening  breast, 
To  feel  for  ever  its  soft  fall  and  swell, 

Awake  for  ever  in  a  sweet  unrest, 
Still,  still  to  hear  her  tender-taken  breath. 
And  so  live  ever— or  else  swoon  to  death. 

As  it  seemed  to  him  in  those  evil  days  when 
disease  had  laid  hold  of  his  body.  Death  was  the 
victor  in  the  contention  of  Fate.  "If  I  should 
die,"  he  wrote  to  Fanny  Brawne,  "I  have  left  no 


KEATS  121 

immortal  work  behind  me — nothing  to  make  my 
friends  proud  of  my  memory — but  I  have  loved 
the  principle  of  beauty  in  all  things,  and  if  I  had 
had  time  I  would  have  made  my  self  remembered." 
And  the  epitaph  which  he  composed  for  himself — 
how  well  it  is  remembered! — was  carved  on 
stone:  "Here  lies  one  whose  name  was  writ  in 
water."  But  to  the  world,  not  Death  but  eternal 
Loveliness  carried  the  palm.  We  think  of  him  as 
the  Marcellus  of  literature,  who  could  not  break 
through  theyiz/^  aspera,  and  as  one  of  "the  inher- 
itors of  unfulfilled  renown";  and  still  we  know 
that  he  accomplished  a  glorious  destin5^  His 
promise  was  greater  than  the  achievement  of 
others. 

And  5^et  a  word  to  avoid  misunderstanding,  for 
it  is  so  easy  in  these  voyages  of  criticism  to  bring 
back  a  one-sided  report,  and  to  emphasise  over- 
much the  broad  aspects  of  a  land  while  neglecting 
the  nicer  points  of  distinction.  Thus,  in  pointing 
out  the  kinship  of  Keats  to  the  Elizabethans,  we 
should  not  forget  that  he  is,  like  all  men,  still 
of  his  own  age.  By  his  depth  and  sincerity  he 
differs,  indeed,  from  certain  other  writers  of  the 
century  who  deal  with  the  same  subjects — from 
William  Morris,  for  example,  yvh.ose:  Earthly  Para- 
dise runs  on  the  strange  companionship  of  love 
and  death  with  almost  a  frivolous  persistence;  but 
he  is  still  far  from  the  brave  furor  and  exultation 
of  the  great  passages  in  Marlowe.  Again  he 
has   more   than  once  imitated  the  simplicity  of 


122  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

William  Browne — notably  in  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian 
Urn  where  the  lines  to  the"  bold  lover"  already- 
quoted  are  evidently  an  echo  of  a  passage  in  the 
Pastorals  : 

Here  from  the  rest  a  lovely  shepherd's  boy 
Sits  piping  on  a  hill,  as  if  his  joy 
Would  still  endure,  or  else  that  age's  frost 
Should  never  make  him  think  what  he  had  lost. 

(Which  is  itself  borrowed  from  Sir  Philip  Sidney's 
"Shepherd  boy  piping  as  though  he  should  never 
be  old.")  But  who  does  not  feel  that  the  young 
beauty  of  Keats  is  different  from  that  first  careless 
rapture,  which  has  gone  never  to  be  recovered? 
Perhaps  the  very  fact  that  he  is  speaking  a 
language  largely  foreign  to  his  own  generation 
adds  a  personal  eagerness,  a  touch  at  times  of 
feverish  straining,  to  his  song. 

I  have  already  intimated  that  side  by  side  with 
the  superb  zest  of  beauty  there  is  another  note 
in  the  dramatists  which  Keats  rarely  or  never 
attains.  That  note  is  caught  in  such  lines  as 
Ford's 

For  he  is  like  to  something  I  remember 
A  great  while  since,  a  long,  long  time  ago  ; 

and  always  when  it  is  struck,  a  curtain  is  drawn 
from  behind  the  fretful  human  actors  and  we  look 
beyond  into  infinite  space.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  is  but  little  in  Keats  of  the  rich  humanity 
and  high  passions  that  for  the  most  part  fill 
the  Elizabethan  stage.     The  pathos  of  Isabella 


KEATS  123 

is  the  nearest  approach  in  him  to  that  deeper 
source  of  poetry,  Keats  himself  was  aware  that 
this  background  was  lacking  to  his  work,  and 
harps  on  the  subject  continuallj'.  He  perceived 
dimly  that  the  motto  of  his  faith, 

"  Beauty  is  truth,  truth  beaut}'," — that  is  all 
Ye  know  on  earth ;  and  all  ye  need  to  know, 

was  but  a  partial  glimpse  of  the  reality.  Had  he 
been  sufficiently  a  Greek  to  read  Plato,  he  might 
have  been  carried  beyond  that  imperfect  view  ; 
even  the  piteous  incompleteness  of  his  own  life 
might  have  laid  bare  to  him  the  danger  lurking 
in  its  fair  deception.  As  it  is,  his  letters  are  filled 
with  vague  yearnings  for  a  clearer  knowledge;  he 
is,  he  says,  as  one  "writing  at  random,  straining 
after  particles  of  light  in  the  midst  of  a  great  dark- 
ness." Unfortunately,  inevitably  perhaps,  when 
he  came  to  put  his  half-digested  theories  into 
practice,  he  turned,  not  to  the  moral  drama  of  the 
Greeks  or  to  the  passionate  human  nature  of  the 
Elizabethans,  but  to  the  humanitarian  philosophy 
that  was  in  the  air  about  him;  and,  accepting 
this,  he  fell  into  a  crude  dualism.  "I  find  there 
is  no  worthy  pursuit,"  he  writes,  "but  the  idea 
of  doing  some  good  to  the  world.  ...  I 
have  been  hovering  for  some  time  between  an 
exquisite  sense  of  the  luxurious,  and  a  love  for 
philosophy." 

It  has    been    generall}'    supposed    that    Keats 
abandoned  his  unfinished  Hyperion,  and  started 


124  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

to  rewrite  it  in  the  form  of  a  vision,  through 
dissatisfaction  with  the  Miltonic  inversions  of 
language  in  the  earher  draft  and  through  the 
influence  of  Dante's  Commedia.  That  view  is 
demonstrably  true  in  part,  but  I  think  the  real 
motive  for  the  change  goes  deeper.  There  is,  in 
fact,  an  inherent  contradiction  in  his  treatment  of 
the  theme  which  rendered  a  completion  of  the 
original  poem  almost  impracticable.  The  subject 
is  the  overthrow  of  the  Titans  by  the  new  race 
of  gods — Saturn  succumbing  to  the  arms  of  his 
own  child  and  Hyperion,  Lord  of  the  Sun,  fleeing 
before  Apollo  of  the  golden  bow  and  the  lyre;  it 
is  the  old  dynasty  of  formless  powers,  driven  into 
oblivion  by  the  new  creators  of  form  and  order. 
That  was  the  design,  but  it  is  easy  to  see  how 
in  the  execution  the  poet's  dominant  idea  over- 
mastered him  and  turned  his  intended  paean  on 
the  birth  of  the  new  beauty  into  a  sonorous  dirge 
for  the  passing  away  of  the  old.  Our  imagination 
is  indeed  lord  of  the  past  and  not  of  the  future. 
The  instinctive  sympathy  of  the  poet  for  the  fallen 
deities  is  felt  in  the  very  first  line  of  the  poem, 
and  it  never  changes.  Consider  the  picture  of 
Hj^perion's  home: 

His  palace  bright, 
Bastion'd  with  pyramids  of  glowing  gold, 
And  touch'd  with  shade  of  bronzed  obelisks, 
Glared  a  blood-red  through  all  its  thousand  courts, 
Arches,  and  domes,  and  fiery  galleries ; 
And  all  its  curtains  of  Aurorian  clouds 
Flush'd  angerly — 


KEATS  125 

or  consider  the  apparition  of  Hyperion  himself : 

He  look'd  upon  them  all, 
And  in  each  face  he  saw  a  gleam  of  light, 
But  spleudider  in  Saturn's,  whose  hoar  locks 
Shoue  like  the  bubbling  foam  about  a  keel 
When  the  prow  sweeps  into  a  midnight  cove. 
In  pale  and  silver  silence  they  remain'd, 
Till  suddenly  a  splendour,  like  the  mom, 
Pervaded  all  the  beetling  gloomy  steeps. 
All  the  sad  spaces  of  oblivion, 
And  every  gulf,  and  every  chasm  old. 
And  every  height,  and  every  sullen  depth, 
Voiceless,    or    hoarse    with    loud    tormented 

streams:    .    .    . 
It  was  Hyperion  ; — 

are  there  anj^  words  left  in  the  poet's  armory  after 
this  to  describe  the  glory  of  Apollo  ?  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  the  third  book  in  which  he  introduces  the 
young  usurper  is  distinctly  below  the  other  two 
in  force  and  beauty,  and  Keats  knew  it  and  broke 
off  in  the  middle.  That  was,  probably,  in  Sep- 
tember of  18 19  ;  about  two  months  later  he  was 
engaged  in  reshaping  his  work  into  The  Fall  of 
Hyperion^  which  was  also  left  unfinished  and  was 
not  published  until  1856.  In  its  altered  form  the 
poem  is  cast  into  a  vision.  The  poet  finds  him- 
self in  a  garden  of  rare  flowers  and  delicious  fruits. 
These  vanish  away  and  in  their  place  is  "an  old 
sanctuary  with  roof  august,"  wherein  is  a  mystic 
shrine  and  a  woman  ministering  thereat.  Her 
name  had  once  been  Mnemosyne,  the  goddess  of 
memory,  the  mother  of  the  Muses,  but  now  she 


126  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

is  called  Moneta,  that  is  to  say,  the  guide  or 
admonisher — alas,  for  all  the  change  means !  The 
poet  cries  to  her  for  help: 

"  High  Prophetess,"  said  I,  "  purge  oflF, 
Benign,  if  so  it  please  thee,  my  mind's  film." 
"  None  can  usurp  this  height,"  returned  that  shade, 
"But  those  to  whom  the  miseries  of  the  world 
Are  misery,  and  will  not  let  them  rest." 

But  are  there  not  others,  cries  the  poet,  who 
have  felt  the  agouy  of  the  world,  and  have  laboured 
for  its  redemption  ?  Where  are  they  that  they  are 
not  here  ?     And  then : 

"Those  whom  thou  spakest  of  are  no  visionaries," 

Rejoin'd  that  voice  ;  "  they  are  no  dreamers  weak ; 

They  seek  no  wonder  but  the  human   ace, 

No  music  but  a  happy-noted  voice  : 

They  come  not  here,  they  have  no  thought  to  come; 

And  thou  art  here,  for  thou  art  less  than  they. 

What  benefit  canst  thou  do,  or  all  thy  tribe, 

To  the  great  world?    Thou  art  a  dreaming  thing." 

And  thereupon,  in  a  vision,  she  unfolds  before  his 
eyes  the  fall  of  Hyperion  and  the  progress  of 
humanity  symbolised  in  the  advent  of  Apollo. 
To  compare  this  mutilated  version  with  the  poem 
Keats  had  written  under  the  instinctive  inspiration 
of  his  genius  is  one  of  the  saddest  tasks  of  the 
student  of  literature. 

No,  it  was  not  any  dislike  of  Miltonic  idioms  or 
any  impulse  from  Dante  that  brought  about  this 
change  in  his  ambition  ;  it  was  the  working  of  the 
ineluctable   Time-spirit,     His   early  association? 


KEATS  127 

with  Leigh  Hunt  had  prepared  him  for  this 
treachery  to  his  nature,  but  there  was  a  poverty 
in  the  imagination  of  those  cockney  enthusiasts 
for  progress  which  would  have  saved  him  ulti- 
mately from  their  influence.  It  was  the  richer 
note  of  Wordsworth,  the  still  sad  music  of 
humanity  running  through  that  poet's  mighty 
song,  that  wrought  the  fatal  revolution.  As  early 
as  Ma}^  of  18 18  he  had  written  to  a  friend  (and 
the  passage  is  worthy  of  quoting  at  some  length): 

My  Branchings  out  therefrom  have  been  numerous  : 
one  of  them  is  the  consideration  of  Wordsworth's  genius 
,  .  .  and  how  he  differs  from  Milton,  And  here  I 
have  nothing  but  surmises,  from  an  uncertainty  whether 
Milton's  apparently  less  anxiety  for  Humanity  proceeds 
from  his  seeing  further  or  not  than  Wordsworth  :  and 
whether  Wordsworth  has  in  truth  epic  passion,  and 
martyrs  himself  to  the  human  heart,  the  main  region 
of  his  song.  [After  some  wandering  there  follows  the 
famous  comparison  of  human  life  to  a  large  mansion  of 
many  apartments,  which  may  be  used  as  a  key  to  the 
symbolism  of  the  later  Hyperion,  and  then]  We  see  not 
the  balance  of  good  and  evil ;  we  are  in  a  mist,  we  are 
now  in  that  state,  we  feel  the  "  Burden  of  the  Mystery." 
To  this  point  was  Wordsworth  come,  as  far  as  I  can  con- 
ceive, when  he  wrote  Tinter7i  Abbey,  and  it  seems  to  me 
that  his  genius  is  explorative  of  those  dark  Passages. 
Now  if  we  live,  and  go  on  thinking,  we  too  shall  explore 
them.  He  is  a  genius  and  superior  to  us,  in  so  far  as  he 
can,  more  than  we,  make  discoveries  and  shed  a  light  in 
them.  Here  I  must  think  Wordsworth  is  deeper  than 
Milton,  though  I  think  it  has  depended  more  upon  the 
general  and  gregarious  advance  of  intellect,  than  indi- 
vidual greatness  of  Mind. 


128  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

The  Fall  of  Hyperion  is  nothing  less  than  the 
attempt  of  Keats,  against  the  native  grain  of  his 
genius,  to  pass  from  the  inspiration  of  Milton  and 
Shakespeare  to  that  of  Wordsworth.  The  thought 
of  the  two  poems,  and  of  the  living  beauty  of  the 
one  and  the  disrelish  of  the  other,  brings  up  the 
remembrance  of  that  story,  told  by  Edward  Fitz- 
Gerald  from  a  Persian  poet,  of  the  traveller  in  the 
desert  who  dips  his  hand  into  a  spring  of  water 
and  drinks.  By  and  by  comes  another  who  drinks 
of  the  same  spring  from  an  earthen  bowl,  and 
departs,  leaving  his  bowl  behind  him.  The  first 
traveller  takes  it  up  for  another  draught,  but  finds 
that  the  water  which  had  tasted  sweet  from  his 
own  hand  is  now  bitter  from  the  earthen  bowl.  He 
wonders;  but  a  voice  from  heaven  tells  him  the 
clay  from  which  the  bowl  is  made  was  once  Man^ 
and  can  never  lose  the  bitter  flavour  of  mortality. 


BENJAMIN  FRANKI^IN 

There  is  a  certain  embarrassment  in  dealing 
with  Franklin  as  a  man  of  letters,  for  the  simple 
reason  that  he  was  never,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the 
word,  concerned  with  letters  at  all.'  He  lived 
in  an  age  of  writers,  and  of  writing  he  did  his  full 
share ;  but  one  cannot  go  through  the  ten  vol- 
umes of  his  collected  works,  or  the  three  vol- 
umes of  the  admirable  new  edition  now  printing 
under  the  care  of  Mr.  Smyth,"  without  feeling 
the  presence  of  an  intellect  enormously  ener- 
getic, but  directed  to  practical  rather  than  literary 
ends.  Were  it  not  for  the  consummate  ease 
with  which  his  mind  moved,  there  would  indeed 
be    something    oppressive     in    this     display   of 

'In  celebration  of  Franklin's  Bicentenary,  January  17, 
1906,  the  Independent  printed  a  number  of  papers  on  the 
various  aspects  of  his  activity.  The  subject  allotted  to 
me  was  Franklin  hi  Literature. 

■^  The  Writings  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  Collected  and 
Edited,  with  a  Life  and  Introduction,  by  Albert  Henry 
Smyth.  10  vols.  (Three  only  were  published  at  this 
date.)  New  York  :  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1905-6.— The 
text  is  here  amended  much  for  the  better.  But  an  undue 
squeamishness  has  led  the  editor  to  omit  writings  im- 
portant for  a  right  knowledge  of  Franklin,  and  the  notes 
are  unsatisfactory. 

9  129 


130  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

unresting  energy.  Politics,  religion,  ethics,  science, 
agriculture,  navigation,  hygiene,  the  mechanical 
arts,  journalism,  music,  education — in  all  these 
fields  he  was  almost  equally  at  home,  and  every 
subject  came  from  under  his  touch  simplified  and 
enlarged;  on  his  tomb  might  have  been  engraved 
the  epitaph.  Nullum  quod tetigit  non  reyiovavit.  He 
had  perhaps  the  most  clarifying  and  renovating 
intellect  of  that  keenly  alert  age,  and  to  know  his 
writings  is  to  be  familar  with  half  the  activities 
of  the  eighteenth  century.  Yet  his  pen  still 
lacked  that  final  spell  which  transmutes  life  into 
literature.  He  was  ever  engaged  in  enforcing  a 
present  lesson  or  producing  an  immediate  result, 
and  his  busy  brain  could  not  pause  long  enough 
to  listen  to  those  hidden  powers  that  all  the  while 
murmur  in  remote  voices  the  symbolic  meaning 
of  the  puppets  and  the  puppet-actions  of  this 
world.  Like  his  contemporary  Voltaire,  and  to 
a  far  higher  degree,  his  personality  was  greater 
than  any  separate  production  of  his  brain.  And 
so,  as  the  real  charm  of  Voltaire  is  most  felt  in  the 
Correspondence,  where  there  is  no  attempt  to 
escape  from  his  own  personal  interests,  in  the 
same  way  the  better  approach  to  Franklin's  works 
is  through  the  selected  edition  so  arranged  by 
Mr.  Bigelow  as  to  form  a  continuous  and  familiar 
narrative  of  his  life.' 

'  The  Life  of  Benjamin  Franklin,  Written  by  Himself  . 
By  John  Bigelow.  3  vols.  Philadelphia  :  J.  B.  Lippin- 
cott  Co.     Fifth  Edition,  1905. 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  I3I 

But  something  is  still  wanting.  Franklin  the 
man  is  so  much  larger  than  Franklin  the  writer 
that,  like  his  other  contemporary,  Dr.  Johnson, 
he  needs  a  Boswell  to  give  him  his  true  place  in 
literature.  Some  indication  of  what  such  a  work 
might  be  we  have  in  Parton's  solid  and  self-re- 
specting volumes.'  Here  the  practical  achieve- 
ments of  the  man,  the  supreme  versatility  of  his 
mind,  his  dominance  over  the  world,  and  his  own 
powers  of  expression  are  so  brought  together  as 
to  create  a  figure  almost  comparable  to  the  great 
personalities  that  arise  from  the  memoirs  of 
Boswell  and  Lockhart  and  Froude.  But  Parton 
laboured  uuder  certain  disabilities.  He  had,  in 
the  first  place,  to  proceed  from  a  very  imperfect 
edition  of  Franklin's  writings,  which  did  not 
even  include  a  good  text  of  the  Autobiography; 
and  he  lacked  something  of  the  finished  literary 
skill  and  psychological  insight  required  for  his 
task.  His  Life  is,  I  venture  to  say,  despite  cer- 
tain misapprehensions  of  Franklin's  character,  the 
most  interesting  work  of  its  kind  yet  produced  in 
this  country,  vastly  superior  to  the  mutilated  lives 
of  Franklin  that  have  since  been  turned  out  for 
flighty  readers,  but  it  still  leaves  room  for  a  book 
which  might  be  a  possession  forever,  an  honour 
to  American  letters.  And  I  have  in  mind  at 
least   one   of  our  younger  historians  who  could 

'  Life  and  Times  of  Benjamin  Franklin.  By  James 
Parton.  2  vols.  Boston:  Houghton,  Mifflin  &  Co., 
1897.    (First  published  1864.) 


132  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

thus,  if  his  other  self-imposed  tasks  did  not 
prevent,  enroll  his  name  among  the  memorable 
biographers.' 

For  Franklin  would  meet  such  a  biographer 
more  than  half  way.  Whether  from  some  histri- 
onic  instinct  in  his  own  nature,  or  from  some 
secret  sympathy  between  his  individual  will  and 
the  forces  that  play  upon  mankind,  the  supreme 
moments  of  his  career  follow  one  another  like  the 
artificial  tableaux  of  a  drama.  As  a  man  of 
science  his  prime  achievement  was  to  discover 
the  identity  of  lightning  and  the  electric  fluid. 
Eripuit  ccbIo  fichneii  sceptrumque  tyrannis,  wrote 
Turgot  of  that  famous  event,  having  in  mind  the 
tyrant  superstitions  of  both  heaven  and  earth; 
and  it  is  peculiarly  appropriate  that  this  step  in 
what  may  be  called  the  secularisation  of  celestial 
phenomena  should  have  come  from  the  champion 
of  political  liberty.  Who  was  better  fitted  than 
this  prophet  of  common  sense  to  give  an  answer 
to  Virgil's  question: 

An  te,  genitor,  cum  fulmina  torques, 
Nequiquamhorremus,  csecique  in  nubibus  ignes 
Terrificant  animos  et  inania  murmura  miscent  ? 

Not  from  himself  but  from  others  comes  the  story 
of  his  dramatic  experiment.  The  time  is  a  day 
in  June  of  1752,  when  a  thunder-storm  is  threaten- 

>  As  certain  humorous  critics  have  intimated  that  only 
modesty  prevented  the  naming  of  this  gentleman,  I  may 
say  that  I  had  in  mind  Mr.  William  Garrolt  Brown. 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  I33 

ing.  The  scene  is  in  the  purHeus  of  Philadelphia. 
Thither  Franklin  and  his  son,  fearing  the  ridicule 
of  their  neighbours,  steal  out  unobserved.  There 
they  send  up  a  silk  kite  constructed  for  the 
purpose  and  then  seek  the  shelter  of  an  open 
abandoned  cowshed.  The  cord  of  the  kite,  except 
the  end  of  non-conducting  silk  which  they  hold 
in  their  hands,  is  hempen,  and  will  become,  when 
wet,  an  excellent  conductor.  At  the  juncture  of 
the  hemp  and  the  silk  is  a  metal  key,  which  is 
connected  with  a  lyCyden  jar.  The  storm  breaks 
and  a  thunder-cloud  passes  directly  over  the  kite, 
but  still  there  is  no  sign  of  electricity.  The 
philosopher  is  in  despair  and  begins  to  fear  that 
the  fine  theories  he  has  spread  abroad  will  end  in 
mockery,  when,  suddenly,  the  fibres  of  the  hem- 
pen cord  stand  on  end.  He  applies  his  knuckle 
to  the  key,  feels  the  customary  shock,  and  knows 
that  he  can  justify  himself  in  the  ej^es  of  Europe. 
Even  more  striking,  if  less  picturesque,  is  the 
scene  which  may  stand  as  the  climax  of  his  long 
struggle  to  preserve  the  union  of  England  and 
the  colonies.  It  happened  in  1774,  when  he  was 
in  London  as  Commissioner  for  Pennsylvania  and 
Massachusetts,  and  when  the  feeling  of  irritation 
on  both  sides  was  at  the  fever  point.  A  friendly 
member  of  Parliament  had  put  into  Franklin's 
hands  certain  letters  in  which  Governor  Hutch- 
inson, of  Massachusetts,  though  a  native-born 
American,  had  urged  the  most  exasperating 
measures  of  oppression  against  the  colonies.  These 


134  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

letters  Franklin,  by  permission,  had  transmitted  to 
Boston,  where  they  naturally  raised  a  tempest  of 
indignation.    Complications  ensued  in  London,  a 
fatal  duel  was  fought,  and  Franklin,  though  his 
part  in  the  aflfair  was  perfectly  honourable,  had 
given    an   occasion    to   his  enemies   for  abusive 
defamation.     And  they  did  not  miss  the  oppor- 
tunity.    A  petition  had  been  laid  before  the  Privy 
Council   to   remove    Governor  Hutchinson,  and 
Franklin  was  summoned  to  meet  that  exalted  body 
in  the  so-called  Cockpit.     "All  the  courtiers," 
Franklin  wrote  home  afterward,  "were  invited,  as 
to  an  entertainment,  and  there  never  was  such  an 
appearance  of  Privy  Councillors  on  any  occasion, 
not  less    than   thirty-five,    besides  an   immense 
crowd  of  other  auditors.  .  .    The  Solicitor-General 
[Mr.  Wedderburn]  then  went  into  what  he  called 
a  history  of  the  province  for  the  last  ten  years, 
and  bestowed  plenty  of  abuse  upon  it,  mingled 
with  encomium  on  the  governors.   But  the  favour- 
ite  part   of  his  discourse   was   levelled    at   your 
agent,  who  stood  there  the  butt  of  his  invective 
ribaldry   for   near    an   hour,    not    a  single  I^ord 
adverting  to  the  impropriety    and    indecency  of 
treating  a  public  messenger  in  so  ignominious  a 
manner.   .    .     If  he  had  done  a  wrong,  in  obtain- 
ing and  transmitting  the  letters,  that  was  not  the 
tribunal   where  he  was  to  be  accused  and  tried. 
The  cause   was   already   before   the   Chancellor. 
Not  one  of  their  Lordships  checked  and  recalled 
the  orator  to  the  business  before  them,  but,  on 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  I  35 

the  contrar}',  a  very  few  excepted,  they  seemed  to 
enjoy  highly  the  entertainment,  and  frequently 
burst  out  in  loud  applauses.  This  part  of  his 
speech  was  thought  so  good,  that  they  have  since 
printed  it,  in  order  to  defame  me  everywhere,  and 
particularly  to  destroy  my  reputation  on  your 
side  of  the  water;  but  the  grosser  parts  of  the 
abuse  are  omitted,  appearing,  I  suppose,  in  their 
own  eyes,  too  foul  to  be  seen  on  paper,"  It 
would  be  interesting  to  know  what  the  Council 
thought  worthy  to  expunge.  As  printed,  the 
speech  of  Wedderburn  was  sufficiently  vitupera- 
tive, one  would  think: 

I  hope,  my  Lords,  he  exclaimed,  with  thundering  voice 
and  vehement  beating  of  his  fist  on  the  cushion  before 
him — I  hope,  my  Lords,  you  will  mark  and  brand  the 
man,  for  the  honour  of  this  country,  of  Europe,  and 
of  mankind.  .  .  .  He  has  forfeited  all  the  respect  of 
societies  and  of  men.  Into  what  companies  will  he  here- 
after go  with  an  unembarrassed  face,  or  the  honest  in- 
trepidity of  virtue?  Men  will  watch  him  with  a  jealous 
eye  ;  they  will  hide  their  papers  from  him,  and  lock  up 
their  escritoirs.  He  will  henceforth  esteem  it  a  libel  to 
be  called  a  man  of  letters  ;  homo  trium  literaruin  (i.e., 
y«r,  thief !)  .  .  .  He  not  only  took  away  the  letters  of 
one  brother;  but  kept  himself  concealed  till  he  nearly 
occasioned  the  murder  of  the  other.  It  is  impossible  to 
read  his  account,  expressive  of  the  coolest  and  most  de- 
liberate malice,  without  horror.  .  ,  .  Amidst  these 
tragical  events,  of  one  person  nearly  murdered,  of  an- 
other answerable  for  the  issue,  of  a  worthy  governor  hurt 
in  his  dearest  interests,  the  fate  of  America  in  suspense  ; 
here  is  a   man   who,    with    the  utmost  insensibility  of 


136  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

remorse,  stands  up  and  vows  himself  the  author  of  all,  I 
can  compare  it  only  to  Zanga,  in  Dr.  Young's  Revenge  : 

"  Know  then  't  was /, 

/  forged  the  letters— /disposed  the  picture— 

/  hated,  /despised,  and  /destroy." 

I  ask,  my  Lords,  whether  the  revengeful  temper  attributed, 
by  poetic  fiction  only,  to  the  bloody  African  is  not  sur- 
passed by  the  coolness  and  apathy  of  the  wily  American  ? 

The  scene  is  dramatic  in  the  extreme — the 
vociferous,  malignant  accuser,  the  lords  gloating 
over  their  victim,  nodding  approval  to  the  bully 
and  breaking  out  into  laughter  when  the  slander 
was  most  virulent;  and  Franklin,  all  the  while 
standing  at  one  end  of  the  room  in  the  recess  by 
the  chimney,  erect,  motionless,  with  countenance, 
so  an  eyewitness  described  it,  as  unchangeable 
as  if  carved  out  of  wood.  He  would  seem  almost 
to  have  had  in  view  the  vicissitudes  of  his  own 
life,  when  years  before,  as  a  young  man,  he  had 
written  his  character  of  "Cato"  for  the  Weekly 
Merairy:  "His  aspect  is  sweetened  with  humanity 
and  benevolence,  and  at  the  same  time  embold- 
ened with  resolution,  equally  free  from  a  difladent 
bashfulness  and  an  unbecoming  assurance.  The 
consciousness  of  his  own  innate  worth  and  un- 
shaken integrity  renders  him  calm  and  undaunted 
in  the  presence  of  the  most  great  and  powerful, 
and  upon  the  most  extraordinary  occasions. ' '  But 
Franklin  had  his  malicious  side.  In  the  Cockpit 
he  wore,  we  are  told,  a  full  dress-suit  of  spotted 
Manchester  velvet.     On  a  memorable  day,  just 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  1 37 

four  years  later,  when  the  treaty  with  France  was 
to  be  signed,  he  took  pains  to  appear  in  the  same 
conspicuous  garb — he  was  ever  a  humourist,  this 
wily  American  !  For  the  rest,  the  epigram  of 
Horace  Walpole  is  sufficiently  well  known: 

Sarcastic  Sawney,  swol'n  with  spite  and  prate, 
On  silent  Franklin  poured  his  venal  hate. 
The  calm  philosopher,  without  reply. 
Withdrew,  and  gave  his  country  liberty. 

Franklin,  I  believe,  never  met  Dr.  Johnson; 
and  this  is  a  pity,  for  the  clash  between  the  dic- 
tator's burly  insolence  and  Franklin's  irresistible 
wit  would  have  furnished  an  unforgettable  pen- 
dant to  the  ignominy  of  the  Cockpit.  He  was, 
however,  brought  face  to  face  with  the  only  other 
personality  entirely  of  that  age  which  was  com- 
parable to  his  own.  In  1778  Voltaire,  an  old  man 
tottering  to  the  grave,  revisited  Paris  to  accept  the 
homage  of  the  city,  and  to  die.  The  American 
envoys  were  received  in  his  chamber,  and  there 
the  patriarch  of  the  terrible  new  faith  that  was 
permeating  society  pronounced  a  solemn  blessing 
upon  the  representative  of  the  rising  generation. 
"When  I  gave  my  benediction,"  he  wrote  a  few 
days  later,  "to  the  grandson  of  the  sage  and 
illustrious  Franklin,  the  most  honourable  man  of 
America,  I  spoke  only  these  words,  God  and 
Liberty  !  All  who  were  present  shed  tears. ' '  But 
the  petted  spokesmen  of  the  century  were  to  meet 
on  a  more  eminent  stage  and  in  a  more  noteworthy 


138  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

scene.  At  a  public  session  of  the  Academy  of 
Sciences  the  two  "philosophers"  sat  together 
on  the  platform,  the  lodestone  of  all  eyes.  What 
happened  can  best  be  related  in  the  words  of  John 
Adams,  a  curious  and  jealous  observer: 

Voltaire  and  Franklin  were  both  present,  and  there 
presently  arose  a  general  cry  that  M.  Voltaire  and  M. 
Franklin  should  be  introduced  to  each  other.  This  was 
done,  and  they  bowed  and  spoke  to  each  other.  This 
was  no  satisfaction  ;  there  must  be  something  more. 
Neither  of  our  philosophers  seemed  to  divine  what  was 
wished  or  expected.  They,  however,  took  each  other  by 
the  hand  ;  but  this  was  not  enough.  The  clamour  con- 
tinued until  the  exclamation  came  out,  '^'^  Jl  faut  s'eni- 
brasser  a  la  Frangaise!  "  The  two  aged  actors  upon  this 
great  theatre  of  philosophy  and  frivolity  then  embraced 
each  other  by  hugging  one  another  in  their  arms  and 
kissing  each  other's  cheeks,  and  then  the  tumult  sub- 
sided. And  the  cry  immediately  spread  throughout  the 
kingdom,  and  I  suppose  over  all  Europe,  "  Qu"  il  etait 
charmant  de  voir  embrasser  Solon  et  Sophocle!  " 

This  great  theatre  of  philosophy  and  frivolity  ! 
Dear  sir,  it  is  the  world  of  the  eighteenth  century 
you  are  naming  so  petulantly,  the  stage  on  which 
you  are  yourselfplaying  a  lesser  but  no  mean  part. 
Nor  would  it  be  easy  to  find  a  tableau  more 
strikingly  significant  of  the  powers  that  had 
already  given  freedom  to  America  and  were  soon 
to  set  France  and  all  Europe  ablaze.  It  might 
seem  as  if  the  Daemon  of  history  had  chosen 
Franklin  to  be  the  protagonist  in  the  successive 
acts  of  that  drama  of  mingled  tragedy  and  comedy 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  1 39 

wherein  the  people  of  the  nations  were  shuffled 
about  as  supernumeraries. 

Other  scenes  might  be  quoted  as  minor  episodes 
in  that  stupendous  drama — the  presentation  of 
Franklin  to  his  Majesty  Louis  XVI.,  when 
Franklin's  wig  played  so  comical  a  part;  the 
receipt  of  the  news  of  Burgoyne's  surrender;  and, 
long  before  these,  the  interrogation  of  Franklin 
before  the  British  Parliament,  For  the  last  and 
most  beautiful  scene  we  must  pass  on  to  another 
parliament  which  was  sitting  in  a  far  less  sumpt- 
uous hall.  It  was  in  September  of  1787,  and  the 
Convention  of  the  States  at  Philadelphia  had,  after 
long  uncertainties,  drafted  the  Constitution  which 
was  to  justify  and  make  perpetual  the  labours  of 
which  Franklin  had  borne  so  heavy  a  share. 
The  story  is  related  by  Madison  that,  while  "the 
last  members  were  signing,  Dr,  Franklin,  look- 
ing toward  the  president's  chair,  at  the  back  of 
which  a  rising  sun  happened  to  be  painted, 
observed  to  a  few  members  near  him  that  painters 
had  found  it  difficult  to  distinguish  in  their  art  a 
rising  from  a  setting  sun.  *I  have,'  he  said, 
'often  and  often,  in  the  course  of  the  session,  and 
the  vicissitudes  of  my  hopes  and  fears  as  to  its 
issue,  looked  at  that  behind  the  president,  without 
being  able  to  tell  whether  it  was  rising  or  setting; 
but  now,  at  length,  I  have  the  happiness  to 
know  that  it  is  a  rising  and  not  a  setting 
sun.'  "  So  it  was  the  venerable  man  pro- 
nounced  upon   the   work  of  his  generation  and 


I40  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

saluted   those  who  were  about  to  take  up  the 
burden. 

Franklin  was  not  precisely  a  man  of  letters,  yet 
his  life  is  almost  literature,  and  out  of  it  might 
be  made  one  of  the  great  books.  Not  only  do  the 
salient  events  of  his  career  take  on  this  dramatic 
form  which  is  already  a  kind  of  literary  expres- 
sion, but  he  goes  further  than  that  and  leaves 
the  task  of  the  biographer  half  done,  by  using 
language  as  one  of  his  chief  instruments  of 
activity.  Even  the  sallies  of  his  wit  were  a 
power,  often  consciously  used,  in  the  practical 
world.  So  in  Paris,  during  the  dark  days  of  the 
war,  a  well-placed  jest  here  and  there  was  sur- 
prisingly effective  in  keeping  up  the  confidence  of 
our  French  friends.  When  some  one  told  him 
that  Howe  had  taken  Philadelphia,  he  was  ready 
with  the  retort:  "  I  beg  your  pardon,  sir,  Phila- 
delphia has  taken  Howe."  And  again  when  the 
story  of  another  defeat  was  disseminated  by  the 
British  Ambassador,  and  Franklin  was  asked 
if  it  were  true,  he  replied:  "No,  monsieur,  it  is 
not  a  truth;  it  is  onlj'^  a  Stormont."  And 
throughout  Paris  a  "stormont"  passed  for  a  lie. 
At  another  time  some  one  accused  the  Americans 
of  cowardice  for  firing  from  behind  the  stone 
walls  of  Lexington:  "Sir,"  said  Franklin,  "I 
beg  to  inquire  if  those  same  walls  had  not  two 
sides  to  them?"  Best  known  of  all  is  his  pun, 
bravest  of  all  puns,  in  the  Continental  Congress 
when    there    was    hesitation   over    signing    the 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  14I 

Declaration  of  Independence.  "We  must  be 
unanimous,"  said  Hancock;  "there  must  be  no 
pulling  different  ways ;  we  must  all  hang 
together."  "Yes,"  added  Franklin,  "we  must, 
indeed,  all  hang  together,  or,  most  assuredly, 
we  shall  all  hang  separately." 

But  his  pen  was  as  ready  a  servant  as  his 
tongue,  and  how  diligently  he  trained  himself 
to  this  end  every  reader  of  the  Autobiography 
knows.  From  childhood  he  was  an  eager  and 
critical  student,  and  few  pages  of  his  memoirs  are 
written  with  more  warmth  of  recollection  than 
those  which  tell  of  the  books  he  contrived  to  buy, 
Bunyan's  works  first  of  all.  He  seems  to  think 
that  the  Spectator  had  the  predominating  in- 
fluence on  his  style,  and  apparently  he  was  still 
under  sixteen  when  an  odd  volume  of  that  work 
set  him  to  studying  systematically.  His  method 
was  to  read  one  of  the  essays  and  then  after  a 
number  of  days  to  rewrite  it  from  a  few  written 
hints,  striving  to  make  his  own  language  as 
correct  and  elegant  as  the  original;  or,  again,  he 
turned  an  essay  into  verse  and  back  again  into 
prose  from  memory.  "  I  also,"  he  adds,  "  some- 
times jumbled  my  collections  of  hints  into  con- 
fusion, and  after  some  weeks  endeavoured  to 
reduce  them  into  the  best  order,  before  I  began  to 
form  the  full  sentences  and  complete  the  paper. 
This  was  to  teach  me  method  in  the  arrangement 
of  thoughts.  By  comparing  my  work  afterwards, 
with  the  original,   I  discovered  many  faults  and 


142  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

amended  them;  but  I  sometimes  had  the  pleasure 
of  fancying  that,  in  certain  particulars  of  small 
import,  I  had  been  lucky  enough  to  improve  the 
method  or  the  language,  and  this  encouraged  me 
to  think  I  might  possibly  in  time  come  to  be  a 
tolerable  English  writer,  of  which  I  was  extremely 
ambitious."  His  method — on  the  whole  one  of 
the  best  of  disciplines,  better,  I  think,  than  the 
system  of  themes  now  employed  in  our  colleges — 
could  scarcely  have  been  anything  for  Franklin 
save  a  precocious  discovery,  although  it  had,  of 
course,  been  used  long  before  his  day.  Cicero 
tells  how  the  orator  Crassus  had  begun  to  form 
himself  on  a  plan  not  essentially  different,  but 
turned  from  this  to  the  more  approved  exercise 
of  converting  the  Greek  writers  into  equivalent 
ly^tin.  V^ertere  GrcEca  171  Latiniim  veteres  nostri 
orafores  optimian  J2idicaba7tt,  said  Quintilian;  and 
Franklin's  language  would  have  gained  in  rich- 
ness if  he,  too,  had  proceeded  a  step  further  and 
undergone  the  discipline  ofcomparing  his  English 
with  the  classics.'     As  it  is,  he  made  himself  one 

»  That  venerable  schoolmaster,  Roger  Ascham,  had  his 
way  of  elaborating  this  method  :  "  First,  let  him  teach 
the  childe,  cherefullie  and  plainlie,  the  cause,  and  matter 
of  the  letter  [  of  Cicero's  ]  :  then,  let  him  construe  it  into 
Englishe,  so  oft,  as  the  childe  may  easilie  carie  awaie 
the  vnderstanding  of  it :  Lastlie,  parse  it  ouer  perfitlie. 
This  done  thus,  let  the  childe,  by  and  by,  both  construe 
and  parse  it  ouer  againe :  so,  that  it  may  appeare,  that 
the  childe  douteth  in  nothing,  that  his  master  taught 
him  before.     After  this,  the  childe   must  take  a  paper 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  1 43 

of  the  masters  of  that  special  st5'le  of  the  eigh- 
teenth century  which  concealed  a  good  deal  of 
art  under  apparent,  even  obtrusive,  negligences. 
He  professed  to  model  himself  on  Addison,  but 
his  language  is  really  closer  to  the  untrimmed 
and  vigorous  sentences  of  Defoe.  And  in  spirit 
his  actual  affinity  is  more  with  Swift  than  with 
the  spectator;  or,  rather,  he  lies  between  the  two, 
with  something  harsher  than  the  suave  imper- 
tinence of  Addison  yet  without  the  terrible 
savagery  of  the  Dean.  In  particular  he  aflfected 
Swift's  two  weapons  of  irony  and  the  hoax,  and, 
if  he  did  not  quite  make  literature  with  them, 
he  at  least  made  history,  which  his  predecessor 
could  not  do.  Sometimes  he  was  content  to 
borrow  an  invention  bodily — "convey  the  wise 
it  call" — as  when  he  badgered  a  rival  almanac 
maker  by  foretelling  the  date  of  his  death  and 
then  calmly  proving  the  truth  of  the  prophecy  out 
of  the  poor  fellow's  angry  protestations.  And 
entirely  in  the  vein  of  Swift,  if  not  so  palpably 
stolen,  are  a  number  of  his  political  pamphlets, 
notably,    in   the   way    of    irony,  the    Rules  for 

booke,  and  sitting  in  some  place,  where  no  man  shall 
prompe  him,  by  him  self,  let  him  translate  into  Euglishe 
his  former  lesson.  Then  shewing  it  to  his  master,  let 
the  master  take  from  him  his  latin  booke,  and  pausing 
an  houre,  at  the  least,  than  let  the  childe  translate  his 
owne  Englishe  into  latin  agaiiie,  in  an  other  paper  booke. 
When  the  childe  brinsj;eth  it,  turned  into  latin,  the 
master  must  compare  it  with  Tullies  booke,  and  laie 
them  both  togither. 


144  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

Reducing  a  Great  Empire  to  a  Small  One.  As 
for  his  hoaxes  they  were  innumerable  and  aston- 
ishingly successful.  They  all  point  back  to 
the  incorrigible  Dean  of  St.  Patrick's,  although 
one  of  the  most  famous  of  them  was  probably 
suggested  by  Walpole's  fictitious  letter  of  Fred- 
erick the  Great,  which  drove  Rousseau  one  stage 
further  into  lunacy.  To  expose  the  hollowness  of 
Great  Britain's  claim  to  absolute  ownership  of 
America  because  that  country  had  been  colonised 
by  Englishmen,  Franklin  took  advantage  of  the 
ancient  German  settlement  of  England  and  pub- 
lished a  so-called  Edict  of  the  King  of  Prussia. 
The  result  he  tells  in  a  letter  to  his  son  (October 
6,  1773): 

What  made  it  the  more  noticed  here  was,  that  people  in 
reading  it  were,  as  the  phrase  is,  taken  in,  till  they  had 
got  half  through  it,  and  imagined  it  a  real  edict,  to  which 
mistake  I  suppose  the  King  of  Prussia's  character  must 
have  contributed.  I  was  down  at  Lord  Le  Despencer's, 
when  the  post  brought  that  day's  papers.  Mr.  White- 
head was  there,  too  (Paul  Whitehead,  the  author  of 
Manners),  who  runs  early  through  all  the  papers,  and 
tells  the  company  what  he  finds  remarkable.  He  had 
them  in  another  room,  and  we  were  chatting  in  the 
breakfast  parlour,  when  he  came  running  in  to  us,  out 
of  breath,  with  the  paper  in  his  hand.  Here  !  says  he, 
here 's  news  for  ye  !  Here  '5  the  King  of  Prussia,  claim- 
ing a  right  to  this  kingdom!  All  stared,  and  I  as  much  as 
anybody;  and  he  went  on  to  read  it.  When  he  had  read 
two  or  three  paragraphs,  a  gentleman  present  said,  Damn 
his  impudence,  I  dare  say  zve  shall  hear  by  next  post 
that  he  is  upon  his  march  with  one  hundred  thousand 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  145 

men  to  back  this.  Whitehead,  who  is  very  shrewd, 
soon  after  began  to  smoke  it,  and  looking  in  my  face, 
said,  /  '//  be  hayiged  if  this  is  not  sortie  of  your  American 
jokes  upon  tis.  The  reading  went  on,  and  ended  with 
abundance  of  laughing,  and  a  general  verdict  that  it  was 
a  fair  hit :  and  the  piece  was  cut  out  of  the  paper  and 
preserved  in  my  Lord's  collection. 

Other  hoaxes  were  not  so  readily  detected,  and 
have  even  crept  into  sober  history  and  criticism. 
There  is  the  notorious  Speech  of  Polly  Baker, 
which  the  Abbe  Raynal  quoted  to  illustrate  a 
point  of  law  in  his  Histoire  des  Deux  Indes,  and 
which  he  refused  to  expunge  when  informed  of 
its  source.  "Very  well,  Doctor,"  said  he  with 
perfect  nonchalance;  "I  had  rather  relate  your 
stories  than  other  men's  truths."  And  there  is 
the  no  less  notorious  proposal  for  a  New  Ver- 
sion of  the  Bible,  in  which  Franklin,  under  the 
plea  of  modernising  the  text,  altered  the  first  six 
verses  of  Job  into  a  satire  on  monarchical  gov- 
ernment. The  solemn  comment  of  Matthew 
Arnold  on  the  passage  is  a  delightful  piece  of 
unconscious  humour: 

I  remember  the  relief  with  which,  after  long  feeling  the 
sway  of  Franklin's  imperturbable  common  sense,  I  came 
upon  a  project  of  his  for  a  new  version  of  the  Book  of 
Job,  to  replace  the  old  version,  the  style  of  which,  says 
Franklin,  has  become  obsolete  and  thence  less  agreeable. 
"  I  give,"  he  continues,  "  a  few  verses,  which  may  serve 
as  a  sample  of  the  kind  of  version  I  would  recommend." 
We  all  recollect  the  famous  verse  in  our  translation  : 
''Then  Satan  answered  the  Lord,  and  said,  Doth  Job  fear 
God  for  naught?"  Franklin  makes  this:  "Does  your 
10 


146  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Majesty  imagine  that  Job's  good  conduct  is  the  eflFect  of 
mere  personal  attachment  and  afifection  ?  "  I  well  re- 
member how,  when  I  first  read  that,  I  drew  a  deep  breath 
of  relief,  and  said  to  myself,  "After  all,  there  is  a 
stretch  of  humanity  beyond  Franklin's  victorious  good 
sense." 

Alas  for  the  proud  wit  of  man!  These  stumblings 
of  a  great  critic  may  be  a  lesson  in  humility  for 
us,  the  children  of  a  later  day.  And  after  all,  to 
use  his  own  phrase,  it  was  only  a  slight  misplace- 
ment of  sarcasm;  he  did  not  mean  Franklin's 
merry  skit,  but  was  speaking,  prophetically,  of 
that  pretentious  humbug,  the  Revised  Versio?t. 

Later  in  life,  especially  during  his  stay  in  Paris, 
Franklin's  satire  became  even  mellower,  and  he 
took  up  again  a  form  of  writing  in  which  he  had 
early  excelled.  This  was  the  Bagatelle,  as  he 
called  it,  the  little  apologue  written  in  the  light- 
est vein,  yet  containing  often  the  very  heart  of 
his  genial  philosophy.  Such  were  the  Epitaph 
071  Miss  Shipley s  Squirrel,  The  Ephemera,  The 
Whistle,  The  Handsome  and  Deformed  Leg,  and 
the  Dialogue  between  Fraiiklin  and  the  Gout,  to 
name  no  others.  How  neatly  turned  they  all 
are,  how  wise  and  gracious  and  tender;  how  they 
show  what  was  lost  to  pure  literature  b}^  the 
exigencies  of  his  busy  life.  I  cannot  pass  on 
without  quoting  the  least  of  these,  the  letter  to 
a  young  friend  Oyi  the  Loss  of  Her  American 
Squirrel.  It  belongs  with  that  long  list  of  poems 
and  epitaphs,  half  playful  and  half  pathetic,  on 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  1 47 

the  pets  of  dear  women,  beginning  with  Lesbia's 
sparrow : 

I  lament  with  you  most  sincerely  the  unfortunate  end 
of  poor  Mungo.  Few  squirrels  were  better  accomplished, 
for  he  had  a  good  education,  travelled  far,  and  seen  much 
of  the  world.  As  he  had  the  honour  of  being,  for  his 
virtues,  your  favourite,  he  should  not  go,  like  common 
Skuggs,  without  an  elegy  or  an  epitaph.  Let  us  give 
him  one  in  the  monumental  style  and  measure,  which, 
being  neither  prose,  nor  verse,  is  perhaps  the  properest 
for  grief;  since  to  use  common  language  would  look  as 
if  we  were  not  affected,  and  to  make  rhymes  would  seem 
trifling  in  sorrow. 

EPITAPH. 

Alas  !  poor  Mungo ! 

Happy  wert  thou,  hadst  thou  known 

Thy  own  felicity. 

Remote  from  the  fierce  bald  eagle, 

Tyrant  of  thy  native  woods. 

Thou  hadst  naught  to  fear  from  his  piercing  talons, 

Nor  from  the  murdering  gun 

Of  the  thoughtless  sportsman. 

Safe  in  thy  wired  castle, 

Grimalkin  never  could  annoy  thee. 

Daily  wert  thou  fed  with  the  choicest  viands, 

By  the  fair  hand  of  an  indulgent  mistress  ; 

But,  discontented. 

Thou  wouldst  have  more  freedom. 

Too  soon,  alas  !  didst  thou  obtain  it; 

And  wandering. 

Thou  art  fallen  by  the  fangs  of  wanton,  cruel 

Ranger  ! 

Learn  hence. 

Ye  who  blindly  seek  more  liberty, 


148  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Whether  subjects,  sons,  squirrels,  or  daughters, 

That  apparent  restraint  may  be  real  protection, 

Yielding  peace  and  plenty 

With  security. 

You  see,  my  dear  miss,  how  much  more  decent  and 
proper  this  broken  style  is  than  if  we  were  to  say  by  way 
of  epitaph — 

Here  Skugg 

Lies  snug 

As  a  bug 

In  a  rug. 

And  yet,  perhaps,  there  are  people  in  the  world  of  so 
little  feeling  as  to  think  that  this  would  be  a  good  enough 
epitaph  for  poor  Mungo. 

So  it  is  that  speech  and  action  blend  together 
inextricably  to  form  this  fascinating  literary  fig- 
ure. He  moves  through  the  whole  length  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  serene  and  self-possessed,  a 
philosopher  and  statesman  yet  a  fellow  of  infinite 
jest,  a  shrewd  economist  yet  capable  of  the  tender- 
est  generosities.  There  was  a  large  admixture  of 
earth  in  the  image,  no  doubt.  His  wit  was  often 
coarse,  if  not  obscene,  and,  as  his  latest  editor 
observes,  leaves  a  long  ' '  smudgy  trail ' '  behind  it. 
Not  a  little  that  he  wrote  and  that  still  exists  in 
manuscript  is  too  rank  to  be  printed.  One  might 
wish  all  this  away,  and  yet  I  do  not  know ; 
somehow  the  thought  of  that  big  animal  body 
completes  our  impression  of  the  overflowing 
bountif  ulness  of  his  nature.  If  wishing  were  hav- 
ing, I  would  choose  rather  that  he  had  not  made  of 
his  Autobiography  so  singular  a  document  in  petty 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  I49 

prudence  and  economy.  Nothing  in  that  record 
is  more  typical  than  the  remark  on  his  habit  of 
bringing  home  the  paper  he  purchased  through  the 
streets  on  a  wheelbarrow — "to  show,"  he  adds, 
"that  I  was  not  above  my  business."  And  for 
economy,  one  remembers  his  visit  to  the  old  lady  in 
London  who  lived  as  a  religious  recluse,  and  his 
comment:  "  She  looked  pale,  but  was  never  sick  ; 
and  I  give  it  as  another  instance  on  how  small 
an  income  life  and  health  may  be  supported." 
Possibly  the  character  of  his  memoirs  would  have 
changed  if  he  had  continued  them  into  his  later 
years  ;  but  I  am  inclined  rather  to  think  that  the 
discrepancy  between  the  breadth  of  his  activities 
and  the  narrowness  of  his  professed  ideals  would 
have  become  still  more  evident  by  such  an  exten- 
sion. The  truth  is  thej^  only  exaggerate  a  real 
deficiency  in  his  character;  there  was,  after  all,  a 
stretch  of  humanity  beyond  Franklin's  victorious 
good  sense. 

We  feel  this  chiefly  in  his  religious  con- 
victions; it  is  pressed  upon  us  by  contrast  with 
the  only  other  American  who  was  intellectually 
his  peer,  Jonathan  Edwards.  The  world  in 
which  Franklin  moved  lay  beneath  a  clear,  white 
light,  without  shadow  of  concealment,  with  noth- 
ing to  cloud  the  sincerity  and  keenness  of  his 
vision;  but  far  beyond,  in  the  dim  penumbra, 
loomed  that  other  world  of  his  contemporary — a 
region  into  whose  treacherous  obscurities  those 
must  venture  who  seek  the  comforts  and  sweet 


150  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

ecstasies  of  faith,  and  who  find  these  at  times, 
and  at  times,  also,  drink  in  only  strange  exhala- 
tions of  deceit  and  vapours  of  spiritual  pride.  As 
often  as  Franklin's  path  approached  that  misty 
shore  he  drew  back  as  from  a  bottomless  pit. 
Like  other  men  of  his  century,  he  had  built  up 
for  himself  his  own  private  rehgion,  from  which 
the  vague  inherited  emotions  of  the  past  were 
to  be  utterly  excluded.  The  little  book  that 
contains  his  formulated  creed  and  liturgy  may 
still  be  read,  an  extraordinary  document  in  the 
history  of  deism.  The  remarkable  point  in  it  is 
the  frankly  pagan  way  in  which  he  relegates  the 
Infinite  God  to  realms  beyond  our  concern,  and 
selects  for  worship  "  that  particular  wise  and  good 
God  who  is  the  author  and  owner  of  our 
system."  Even  more  remarkable  is  the  ''great 
and  extensive  project,  ' '  divulged  in  the  Autobio- 
graphy, of  creating  throughout  the  world  a  kind 
of  religious  Freemasonry,  to  be  initiated  into  his 
own  doctrines  and  to  be  called  The  Society  of  the 
Free  a7id Easy — "free,  as  being,  by  the  general 
practice  and  habit  of  the  virtues,  free  from  the 
dominion  of  vice  ;  and  particularly  by  the  practice 
of  industry  and  frugality,  free  from  debt,  which 
exposes  a  man  to  confinement,  and  a  species  of 
slavery  to  his  creditors. "  Who  can  read  this  with- 
out recalling  I^amb's  panegyric  of  'i\\&  great  race 
of  borrowers  and  fearing  that  he  has  "fallen  into 
the  society  oilejiders  and  little  men  "  f 

The  same  practical  views  of  religion  may  be 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  15I 

traced  through  many  of  Franklin's  familiar 
letters.  Sometimes  they  combine  with  his 
humour  to  form  a  kind  of  benevolent  worldly 
wisdom,  as  in  this  letter  to  his  sister  Jane,  with 
its  mock  exegesis  of  some  religious  verses  written 
long  ago  by  an  uncle: 

In  a  little  book  he  sent  her,  called  "  None  but  Christ," 
he  wrote  an  acrostic  on  her  name,  which  for  namesake's 
sake,  as  well  as  the  good  advice  it  contains,  I  transcribe 
and  send  you,  viz. 

"Illuminated  from  on  high, 
And  shining  brightly  in  your  sphere, 
Ne'er  faint,  but  keep  a  steady  eye. 
Expecting  endless  pleasures  there. 

"  Flee  vice  as  you  'd  a  serpent  flee  ; 
'R.a.xsQ/aiih  and  hope  three  stories  higher, 
And  let  Christ's  endless  love  to  thee 
Ne'er  cease  to  make  thy  love  aspire. 
Kindness  of  heart  by  words  express, 
Let  your  obedience  be  sincere. 
In  prayer  and  praise  your  God  address, 
Nor  cease,  till  he  can  cease  to  hear." 

.  .  .  You  are  to  understand,  then,  that  faith,  hope,  and 
charity  have  been  called  the  three  steps  of  Jacob's  ladder, 
reaching  from  earth  to  heaven  ;  our  author  calls  them 
stories,  likening  religion  to  a  building,  and  these  are  the 
three  stories  of  the  Christian  edifice.  Thus  improvement 
in  leligion  is  called  building;  up  and  edification.  Faith 
is  then  the  ground  floor,  hope  is  up  one  pair  of  stairs. 
My  dear  beloved  Jenuy,  don't  delight  so  nmch  to  dwell  in 
those  lower  rooms,  but  get  as  fast  as  you  can  into  the 
garret,  for  in  truth  the  best  room  in  the  house  is  charity. 
For  my  part,  I  wish  the  house  was  turned  upside  down ; 


152  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

'tis  so  difficult  (when  one  is  fat)  to  go  up  stairs;  and  not 
only  so,  but  I  imagine  hope  a.nA  faith  may  be  more  firmly 
built  upon  charity,  than  charity  upon  faith  and  hope. 
However  that  may  be,  I  think  it  the  better  reading  to 
say — 

"  Raise  faith  and  hope  one  story  higher." 

Correct  it  boldly,  and  I  '11  support  the  alteration ;  for, 
when  you  are  up  two  stories  already,  if  you  raise  your 
building  three  stories  higher  you  will  make  five  in  all, 
which  is  two  more  than  there  should  be,  you  expose 
your  upper  rooms  more  to  the  winds  and  storms ;  and, 
besides,  I  am  afraid  the  foundation  will  hardly  bear  them, 
unless  indeed  you  build  with  such  light  stufi'  as  straw 
and  stubble,  and  that,  you  know,  won't  stand  fire. 

In  the  end  one  feels  that  both  in  Franklin's 
strength  and  his  limitations,  in  the  versatility 
and  efl&ciency  of  his  intellect  as  in  the  lack  of 
the  deeper  qualities  of  the  imagination,  he  was 
the  typical  American.  If  his  victorious  com- 
mon sense  excluded  that  thin  vein  of  mysticism 
which  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  our  national 
character,  he  represents  the  powers  that  have 
prevailed  and  are  still  shaping  us  to  what  end  we 
do  not  see.  In  particular  one  cannot  read  far  in 
his  letters  without  noting  the  predominance  of 
that  essentially  American  trait —contemporaneity. 
One  gets  the  impression  that  here  was  almost,  if 
not  quite,  the  most  alert  and  most  capacious  in- 
tellect that  ever  concerned  itself  entirely  with 
the  present.  He  was,  of  course,  an  exemplar  of 
prudence,  and  thus  in  a  way  had  his  e5'e  on  the 
immediate  future;  but  it  was  the  demands  of  the 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  I53 

present  that  really  interested  him,  and  the  pos- 
session of  the  past,  the  long  backward  of  time, 
was  to  him  a  mere  oblivion. 

Parton  regarded  Franklin  as  the  model  Chris- 
tian, others  find  no  rehgion  in  him  at  all.  Their 
views  depend  on  how  they  are  afi"ected  by  his 
absorption  in  the  present,  by  his  relegation  of 
Faith  and  Hope  to  the  attic  and  his  choice  of 
earth-born  Charity.  There  is,  in  fact,  no  more 
extraordinary  chapter  in  the  religious  history  of 
the  eighteenth  century  than  the  episode  of  the 
Autobiography  which  tells  how  Franklin  deliber- 
ately set  aside  all  the  traditions  and  experience  of 
the  past  and  set  himself  to  create  a  brand-new 
worship  of  his  own,  adapted  to  the  needs  of  the 
hour.  Was  this  prophetic  of  our  cheerful  readi- 
ness, long  ago  observed  by  Renan,  to  start  a  new 
religion  among  us  every  time  a  man  is  convicted 
of  sin  ?  Are  Christian  Science  and  all  the  lesser 
brood  merely  in  the  line  of  Franklin's  projected 
brotherhood  of  "The  Free  and  Easy"?  Some 
of  the  more  modern  sects  seem  at  least  to  have 
taken  to  themselves  that  society's  virtue  of  "in- 
dustry," and  have  made  themselves  "free  of 
debt." 

And  it  was  this  overmastering  sense  of  the 
present  that  coloured  Franklin's  schemes  of 
education.  Everything  should  be  practical,  and 
look  to  immediate  results.  Naturally  the  Classics, 
as  the  very  embodiment  of  the  past,  received  scant 
sympathy  from  him.     He  merely  tolerated  them 


154  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

in  the  project  which  led  to  the  Philadelphia 
Academy  and  the  University  of  Pennsylvania,  and 
one  of  his  last  pamphlets,  written,  indeed,  from 
his  death-bed,  was  a  diatribe  against  Greek  and 
L/atin. 

As  a  writer  he  has  all  the  clearness,  force,  and 
flexibility  that  come  from  attention  to  what  is 
near  at  hand  ;  he  lacks  also  that  depth  of  back- 
ground which  we  call  imagination,  and  which  is 
largely  the  indwelling  of  the  past  in  the  pres- 
ent, A  clear,  steady  light  rests  upon  his  works  ; 
no  obscuring  shadow  stretches  out  over  them 
from  remote  days,  and  also  no  shade  inviting 
to  repose.  It  is  not  by  accident  that  his  two 
most  literary  productions,  in  the  stricter  sense  of 
that  word,  are  the  Autobiography,  which  might 
be  called  a  long  lesson  in  the  method  of  settling 
problems  of  immediate  necessity,  and  the  Intro- 
ductions to  the  Almanacs — those  documents  in 
contemporaneity  that  have  so  strangely  weathered 
the  years.  Particularly  the  Introduction  of  1757, 
known  as  the  Harangue  of  Father  Abraham,  has 
been  translated  into  all  the  languages  of  the 
world,  and  has  almost  made  of  Poor  Richard  a 
figure  of  popular  mythology : 

I  found  the  good  man  had  thoroughly  studied  my 
almanacs  and  digested  all  I  had  dropped  on  these  topics 
during  the  course  of  five  and  twenty  years.  The  frequent 
mention  he  made  of  me  must  have  tired  any  one  else ;  but 
my  vanity  was  wonderfully  delighted  with  it,  though  I 
was  conscious  that  not  a  tenth  part  of  the  wisdom  was  my 


BENJAMIN    FRANKLIN  I  55 

own,  which  he  ascribed  to  me,  but  rather  the  gleanings 
that  I  had  made  of  the  sense  of  all  ages  and  nations. 

And  the  sense  of  all  ages  is  pretty  well  summed 
up  by  Poor  Richard  in  "  One  to-day  is  worth  two 
to-morrows." 


CHARLES  LAMB  AGAIN 

I  HAVE  already  said  something  in  these  essays 
about  Lamb  as  a  writer  and  man,  but  the  occasion 
of  two  excellent  biographies,'  in  French  and 
English,  is  too  tempting  to  let  pass  without  a 
word  of  more  particular  appreciation. 

In  the  matter  of  literary  criticism  the  honour 
must  remain,  as  might  be  expected,  with  the 
Frenchman.  M.  Derocquigny  has  indeed  treated 
this  aspect  of  his  theme  with  an  amplitude  and 
a  precision  which  no  English  writer  has  ap- 
proached, and  he  has  also  shown  the  trained 
subtlety  of  his  race  in  winding  into  the  secrets  of 
Lamb's  personality.  In  these  things  Mr.  Lucas 
is  not  strong;  more  especially  his  critical  pages — 
they  are  few  in  number — would  seem  to  suflfer 
from  a  tacit  acceptance  of  Lamb  as  a  great  writer. 
Charming  Lamb's  work  certainly  was,  fascinating 
in  a  way,  and  above  all,  like  himself,  lovable ; 
but  I  cannot  help  feeling  that  the  jealous  pother 
of  so  many  editors  recently  engaged  on  the  same 
subject   has  tended  to  throw   dust  in   our  eyes. 

'  Charles  Lamb,  sa  vie  et  ses  ceuvres.     Par  Jules  De- 
rocquigny.    Lille:  Le  Bigot  Freres,  1904. 

The  Life  of  Charles  Lamb.     By  E.  V.  Lucas.     2  vols. 
New  York :  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1905. 
156 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 57 

Let  US,  if  possible,  hold  fast  to  distinctions.  To 
deal  with  his  work  as  if  it  formed  a  body  of  liter- 
ature great  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  word  is  to 
place  him  among  the  small  company  of  masterful 
spirits  where  his  genius  would  only  appear  more 
tenuous  by  comparison,  and  it  is  to  miss,  I  think, 
the  truer  source  of  enjoyment. 

Certainly,  if  we  would  extract  the  sweetness 
from  Lamb's  slender  book  of  verse  we  must 
come  to  it  with  no  such  expectations  as  we  should 
bring  to  the  great  poets.  Lamb,  in  fact,  writes 
as  one  who  has  "  been  enamour' d  of  rare  poesy  " 
rather  than  as  one  impelled  himself  to  sing. 
Now  and  then — once  at  least  in  the  dialogue 
between  Margaret  and  Simon  Woodvil — he 
echoes  nobly  the  larger  utterance  of  the 
Elizabethans: 

To  see  the  sun  to  bed,  and  to  arise. 
Like  some  hot  amourist  with  glowing  eyes. 
Bursting  the  lazy  bands  of  sleep  that  bound  him. 
With  all  his  fires  and  travelling  glories  round  him. 
Sometimes  the  moon  on  soft  night  clouds  to  rest, 
Like  beauty  nestling  in  a  young  man's  breast. 
And  all  the  winking  stars,  her  handmaids,  keep 
Admiring  silence,  while  these  lovers  sleep. 
Sometimes  ou-tstretcht,  in  very  idleness. 
Nought  doing,  saying  little,  thinking  less, 
To  view  the  leaves,  thin  dancers  upon  air. 
Go  eddying  round;  and  small  birds,  how  they  fare. 
When  mother  Autumn  fills  their  beaks  with  corn, 
Filch'd  from  the  careless  Amalthea's  horn. 

No  doubt  there  is  occasionally,  as  in  the  four 


158  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

lines  here  underscored,  a  tone  which  may  be 
called  the  veritable  lingtia  toscana  in  bocca  romana, 
the  speech  of  Elizabeth  with  some  added  sympa- 
thetic accent  of  our  own  times.  We  know  that 
Godwin,  chancing  upon  this  passage,  hunted  for 
it  in  Ben  Jonson,  and  Beaumont  and  Fletcher, 
and  then  sent  to  Lamb  to  help  him  to  the  author. 
But  for  the  most  part  I^amb's  verse  reflects  only 
the  half-faded  light  of  old-world  fancies  flickering 
on  the  details  of  a  prosaic  modern  life, — album 
rhymes  with  the  faint  aroma  of  Quarles  upon  them, 
and  Cockney  sonnets  that  remind  you  of  Drum- 
mond — or  Bowles.  The  mood  of  the  book  is  like 
the  comfort  and  dreams  of  firelight  after  an  irk- 
some day,  and  as  such  it  has  a  well-defined 
charm;  but  it  opens  no  door  into  the  higher 
region  of  the  imagination.  "A  page  of  his 
writings,"  as  Hazlitt  observes,  "  recalls  to  our 
fancy  the  stranger  on  the  grate,  fluttering  in  its 
dusky  tenuity,  with  its  idle  superstition  and 
hospitable  welcome." 

Perhaps  even  the  most  enthusiastic  admirers  of 
Lamb  would  not  claim  more  than  this  for  his 
verse ;  the  real  confusion  begins  when  we  con- 
sider him  as  a  critic.  One  capital  service — not 
without  the  detriment  of  false  emphasis — he  did 
indeed  perform,  by  reviving  an  interest  in  the 
old  English  dramatists  and  in  some  of  the  half- 
forgotten  writers  of  the  seventeenth  century;  and 
to  a  certain  extent  he  acted  as  a  friendly  censor  of 
the  extravagances  of  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge. 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 59 

So,  for  example,  he  admired  Petet  Bell,  but  his 
humour  could  not  fail  to  seize  on  the  more  abject 
lines  of  that  poem.  The  story  goes  that  once  on 
seeing  from  the  street  a  solemn  evening  gathering 
he  shook  the  railings  and  shouted  at  the  window  : 

Is  it  a  party  in  a  parlour, 
All  silent  and  all  damned  ? 

Whether  in  part  from  lyarab's  criticism  or  not, 
these  lines  were  deleted  from  Peter  Bell  after  the 
first  editions  of  1819.'  It  is  one  of  the  irremedia- 
ble losses  of  literature  that  we  do  not  know  his 
thoughts  on  the  gem  of  that  composition  : 

Only  the  Ass,  with  motion  dull, 
Upon  the  pivot  of  his  skull 
Turns  round  his  long  left  ear. 

The  point  to  observe  is  that  Lamb  was  not  so 
much  a  great  critic  as  a  reader  of  fine  taste. 
"  His  taste,"  said  Coleridge  "  acts  so  as  to  appear 
like  the  mechanic  simplicity  of  an  instinct — in 
brief,  he  is  worth  an  hundred  men  of  mere  talents. 
Conversation  with  the  latter  tribe  is  like  the  use 
of  leaden  bells — one  warms  by  exercise;    I^amb 

'  The  full  stanza  reads  : 

"  Is  it  a  party  in  a  parlour? 
Cramm'd  just  as  they  on  earth  were  cramm'd — 
Some  sipping  punch,  some  sipping  tea, 
But,  as  you  by  their  faces  see, 
All  silent  and  all  damn'd." 

June  2,  1820,  Wordsworth  was  talking  about  these  poems 
with  Lamb  and  Crabb  Robinson.  June  11,  Robinson  re- 
cords that  he  had  begged  Wordsworth  to  omit  the  stanza. 


l6o  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

every  now  and  then  irradiates^  and  the  beam, 
though  fine  and  single  as  a  hair,  is  yet  rich  with 
colours,"  It  was  this  instinct,  guided  in  part  by 
a  common  tendency  of  the  age,  that  led  him  to 
fasten  on  the  Elizabethans.  His  remarks  on 
them  do  often  irradiate — the  word  is  aptly  chosen 
— but  as  a  whole  his  writing  is  too  lacking  in 
systematic  reflection  to  rank  him  high  among 
critics.  There  is  no  sense  of  tracking  the  human 
spirit  down  all  its  wandering  way  of  self-reve- 
lation, nor  is  there  any  effort  to  measure  and 
balance  the  full  meaning  of  the  individual  writer. 
He  "  never,"  as  he  himself  confessed  to  Southey, 
"judged  system-wise  of  things,  but  fastened 
upon  particulars."  If  this  habit  saved  him  from 
rigidity  and  from  deciduous  theories,  it  also 
brought  about  a  misleading  incompleteness.  No 
one  could  gather  the  just  proportions  of  the 
Elizabethan  era  from  his  sporadic  remarks,  nor, 
to  take  a  single  case,  could  one  gain  any  notion 
of  Andrew  Marvell's  works  as  a  whole  from 
Lamb's  occasional  and  irrational  eulogies.  In  his 
own  day  his  "imperfect  sympathies"  made  him 
blind  to  the  higher  qualities  of  half  the  world. 
He  was  in  close  touch  with  what  may  be  called 
the  bourgeois  group  about  him,  but  to  all  the 
aristocratic  school,  headed  by  Byron  and  Shelley 
and  Scott,  he  was  not  merely  unsympathetic,  but 
actually  hostile.  One  feels  even  that  he  was 
bound  to  Coleridge  and  Wordsworth,  the  out- 
standing leaders  of  his  own  group,  more  by  per- 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  l6l 

sonal  than  by  intellectual  ties.  Such  an  admission 
can  almost  be  read  in  the  banter  of  his  letters: 

Coleridge  is  absent  but  4  miles,  and  the  neighbour- 
hood of  such  a  man  is  as  exciting  as  the  presence  of  50 
ordinary  Persons.  'T  is  enough  to  be  within  the  whiff 
and  wind  of  his  genius,  for  us  not  to  possess  our  souls  in 
quiet.  If  I  lived  with  him  or  the  author  of  the  Excur- 
sion, I  should  in  a  very  little  time  lose  mj'  own  identity, 
and  be  dragged  along  in  the  current  of  other  peoples' 
thoughts,  hampered  in  a  net. 

In  the  same  letter  occurs  the  famous  phrase  ap- 
plied to  Coleridge :  ' '  His  face  when  he  repeats 
his  verses  hath  its  ancient  glory,  an  Archayigel  a 
little  damaged. ""  This  indeed  is  something  different 
from  L^amb's  uncritical  disregard  of  the  whole 
aristocratic  school,  and  shows  a  sensitiveness  to 
the  weaker  side  of  one  of  his  personal  idols.  But 
he  never  developed  these  intuitions,  never  cut  into 
that  flabby  mass  with  the  sundering  sword,  as 
Hazlitt  did  so  ruthlessly  in  the  Examiner  letter, 
which  was  built  up  on  the  same  phrase,  "  Less 
than  arch-angel  ruined,"  and  which  so  fluttered 
the  literary  dovecote. 

And  in  public  Lamb  was  careful  that  not  even 
such  a  hint  of  his  sharper  sentiments  should 
escape  him.  There  is,  in  fact,  just  a  touch  of 
mutual  admiration  in  the  writings  of  the  whole 
circle,  so  that  we  can  understand,  though  we 
may  heartily  condemn,  the  coarse  assault  of  the 
Mo7ithly  Review  upon  them  as  "a  little  coterie 
of  half-bred  men,  who  .  .  .  puffed  off  each  other 
as  the  first  writers  of  the  day."    Hazlitt  belonged 


l62  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

to  the  coterie  as  much  as  he  could  belong  to  any- 
thing outside  himself,  but  Hazlitt,  though  warped 
at  times  by  prejudice,  had  the  true  critical 
passion,  amounting  almost  to  a  fury,  one  might 
say,  to  get  at  the  heart  of  things  and  strip  the 
good  from  the  bad.  Neither  the  temper  nor  the 
genius  of  Lamb  would  ha\^e  enabled  him  to  detest 
a  man's  principles  yet  love  his  literary  work  as 
Hazlitt  did  with  Scott,  or  to  pass  from  ridicule  of 
Wordsworth's  egotism  and  dulness  to  so  splendid 
a  panegyric  of  his  nobler  parts. 

If  we  wish  for  a  parallel  to  Lamb's  method  as  a 
critic  we  must  come  down  to  Edward  FitzGerald, 
though  by  education  and  taste  the  two  were  so 
far  apart.  There  are — who  would  gainsay  it  ? — 
glimpses  of  rare  discernment  in  Lamb's  letters 
and  notes,  flights  of  sustained  fancy  in  his  critical 
essays,  phrases  and  metaphors  that  are  like 
windows  opening  on  the  garden  of  intellectual 
delight;  but  after  all,  it  is  the  contagion  of 
Lamb's  own  love  for  his  favourites  that  makes  us 
think  of  him  as  a  critic.  His  appeal  is  not  to  the 
judgment,  but  to  personal  friendship.  For  one 
who  remembers  his  comment  on  the  catastrophe 
of  The  Broken  Heart  (Hazlitt,  by  the  way,  balks 
at  everything  that  Lamb  here  lauds),  or  has  com- 
prehended his  subtle  paradox  on  the  Restoration 
Comedy,  there  are  ten  who  will  recall  his  letter  to 
Coleridge:  "If  you  find  the  Miltons  in  certain 
parts  dirtied  and  soiled  with  a  crumb  of  right 
Gloucester,  blacked  in  the  candle  (my  usual  sup- 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 63 

per),  or,  perad venture,  a  stray  ash  of  tobacco 
wafted  into  the  crevices,  look  to  that  passage 
more  especially :  depend  upon  it,  it  contains  good 
matter."  So  many  critics  seem  to  turn  books 
into  business,  so  often  we  doubt  whether  the  great 
books  that  are  commended  are  really  enjoyed! 
Lamb  we  know  read  for  pleasure,  as  did  the  wise 
FitzGerald,  and  he  read  Milton.'  Perhaps  we 
get  even  closer  to  the  secret  of  Lamb's  influence 
in  a  whimsical  letter  to  Barton,  written  when  his 
head  was  "stuffed  up  with  the  East  winds  " : 

I  chuse  a  very  little  bit  of  paper,  for  my  ear  hisses  wli en 
I  bend  down  to  write.  I  can  hardly  read  a  book,  for  I 
miss  that  sviall  soft  voice  which  the  idea  of  articulated 
words  raises  (almost  imperceptibly  to  you)  in  a  silent 
reader.     /  seem  too  deaf  to  see  what  I  read. 

We    can    imagine  FitzGerald  listening  to   that 

'  It  is  merely  an  interesting  coincidence  that  Lamb  and 
FitzGerald  should  have  used  almost  the  same  words  in 
regard  to  the  Additions  to  77/*?  Spanish  Tragedy.  In  his 
Specimens  Lamb  says  of  them  :  "  There  is  nothing  in  the 
undoubted  plays  of  Jonson  which  •would  authorise  us  to 
suppose  that  he  could  have  supplied  the  scenes  in  ques- 
tion. I  should  suspect  the  agency  of  some  '  more  potent 
spirit '.  Webster  might  have  furnished  them.  They  are 
full  of  that  wild  solemn  preternatural  cast  of  grief  which 
bewilders  us  in  the  Duchess  of  3falfy.^'  FitzGerald 
writes  in  a  similar  strain  to  Fanny  Kenible:  "Nobody 
knows  who  wrote  this  one  scene  [III.,  xii..  A.];  it  was 
thought  Ben  Jonson,  who  could  no  more  have  written 
it  than  I  who  read  it:  for  what  else  of  his  is  it  like? 
"Whereas,  Webster  one  fancies  might  have  done  it," 


164  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

small  soft  voice  of  the  printed  page  as  he  turned 
his  Madame  de  Sevigne  or  his  Cervantes,  and  the 
warmth  of  this  living  intimacy  between  author 
and  reader  is  communicated  to  us  of  more  slug- 
gish temperament. 

And  a  curious  similarity  might  be  discovered 
between  Lamb  and  FitzGerald  in  their  disregard 
for  the  actual  concrete  book.  It  was  Lamb  who 
sent  his  volumes  to  a  "  wizened  old  cobbler  hard 
by"  to  be  patched  and  botched  up;  and  who 
would  not  suppose  these  were  a  young  lad's  re- 
collections of  FitzGerald  at  Woodbridge  rather 
than  of  Lamb  at  Enfield  ? — 

There  were  few  modern  volumes  in  his  collection  ;  and 
subsequently,  such  presentation  copies  as  he  received 
were  wont  to  find  their  way  into  my  own  book-case,  and 
often  through  eccentric  channels.  A  Leigh  Hunt,  for 
instance,  would  come  skimming  to  my  feet  through  the 
branches  of  the  apple-trees  (our  gardens  were  contigu- 
ous); or  a  Bernard  Barton  would  be  rolled  downstairs 
after  me,  from  the  library  door.  Marcian  Colonna  I 
remember  finding  on  my  window-sill,  damp  with  the 
night's  fog;  and  the  Plea  of  the  Midsummer  Fairies  I 
picked  out  of  the  strawberry-bed.  It  was  not  that  Lamb 
was  indifferent  to  the  literary  doings  of  his  friends;  but 
their  books,  as  books,  were  unharmonious  on  his  shelves. 
They  clashed,  both  in  outer  and  inner  entity,  with  the 
Marlowes  and  Miltons  that  were  his  household  gods. 

It  is  not  as  a  poet  or  constructive  critic  that 
Lamb  lives  to-day,  but  as  the  Elia  of  the  Essays 
and  the  quaint  humourist  of  the  Letters.  These 
are  indeed  classics  in  the  best  sense  of  the  word, 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 65 

being  actually  read  and  loved.  Yet  even  here  we 
should  not  allow  our  gratitude  to  blind  us  to  the 
reality,  nor  permit  our  sense  of  charm  to  express 
itself  in  terms  of  greatness  ;  for  by  just  such  indis- 
criminations as  this  we  gradually  blunt  the  finer 
edge  of  the  mind.  I  am  not  going  to  dwell 
again  on  the  peculiar  evasion  of  truth  that  runs 
through  all  Lamb's  essays,  separating  them,  so 
at  least  it  seems  to  me,  from  the  writings  that 
belong  to  the  great  tradition.  I  have  already  in 
an  earlier  essay  touched,  perhaps  over-heavily, 
on  this  aspect  of  his  work,  and  I  would  not  by 
repetition  unduly  heighten  the  emphasis.  No 
such  charge,  however,  can  be  laid  if  I  quote  a  few 
words  from  M.  Derocquigny  on  the  same  subject: 

One  may  love  Lamb  without  admiring  indiscriminately 
everything  in  his  character.  And  still  one  can  scarcely 
■wish  that  he  were  exempt  from  his  weaknesses.  These 
are  an  essential  factor  in  his  genius,  and  without  them 
Lamb  would  have  been  something  not  himself.  They 
breathed  into  him  the  spirit  of  indulgence  and  pity 
which  too  often  desert  the  heart  of  the  strong  man.  And 
we  know  that  by  much  self-control  we  are  left  ignorant 
of  many  sides  of  our  fallible  nature.  The  great  connois- 
seurs of  the  human  heart  have  generally  had  great 
weaknesses. 

It  is  fortunate  that  he  was  not  a  writer  by  profession 
His  merit  is  just  this:  that  he  was  an  irregular,  an 
amateur  of  literature — a  common  character  of  old,  which, 
to  our  regret,  is  gradually  become  more  and  more  rare, 
and  which  Sainte-Beuve  praises  in  speaking  of  Joubert, 
with  whom,  by  the  way,  Lamb  has  more  than  one 
aflBnity. 


l66  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

His  devotees  exalt  liis  •wisdom,  his  profound  thought, 
his  penetrating  criticism  of  life,  his  great  knowledge  of 
the  human  heart. 

His  wisdom  is  that  of  a  contemplative  man  for  whom 
the  true  life  is  a  dream,  and  who  avoids  as  far  as  possible 
the  contact  of  realities.  And  it  is  useless  to  look  to  him 
for  the  conduct  of  life.  His  thought,  turned  in  this 
direction  by  great  misfortunes  and  confirmed  in  this 
habit  by  the  reading  which  he  sought  for  consolation, 
glides  over  these  deeper  questions  with  a  humour  half- 
playful  and  half-solemn,  skims  their  surface,  but  into 
their  depths  never  sinks. 

This  is  not  quite  the  tone  of  the  English  pane- 
gyrists of  lyamb,  nor  will  you  find  anything  in 
Mr.  Ivucas's  two  large  volumes  that  shows  this 
kind  of  critical  penetration.  He  is  weak  where 
the  French  writer  is  strongest,  and  yet  for  another 
reason  the  English  biography,  perhaps,  takes  you 
nearer  than  the  other  to  the  secret  of  lyamb's  spell. 
From  a  study  of  contemporary  literature  Mr. 
lyucas  has  made  his  work  not  so  much  a  life  of 
Lamb  alone  as  a  series  of  chapters  on  the  char- 
acters, great  and  small,  who  composed  Lamb's 
circle.  There  is  no  better  criterion  of  a  book  than 
the  other  books  it  sends  you  immediately  to  read, 
and  after  laying  down  this  biography  I  turned 
almost  instinctively  to  Cicero's  De  Amicitia  and 
to  Montaigne's  Z>(?/'^4w2Vz/,  and,  reading  these,  I 
began  to  understand  how  much  of  the  magical 
appeal  of  Lamb's  writings  is  due  to  the  quintes- 
sence of  friendship  he  has  distilled  into  them.  It 
is  not  the  brave  mingling  of  souls  in  the  pursuit 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 67 

of  virtue  which  the  philosophers  vaunt,  nor  could 
it  be  likened  to  that  o^nnium  divinarurn  humana- 
rumque  reriun  aim  benevole?itia  et  caritate  suniina 
consensio,  to  use  the  rolling  eloquence  of  Cicero. 
I  fear  the  bond  of  union  was  rather  one  of  those 
"  incommodities  of  mortality,"  which  a  later 
Roman  deplored,  but  which  Lamb  turned  to  such 
sweet  advantage  :  Nee  tantiim  Jieeessitas  errandi 
sed  erroriim  amor.  And  it  had  little  of  that 
"  inexplicable  and  fatal  force  "  that  drove  Mon- 
taigne and  La  Boetie  to  seek,  before  they  had  seen, 
each  other,  and  made  of  their  two  wills  one  at  first 
sight.  Something  of  these  lofty  modes  coloured 
the  early  union  of  Lamb  and  Coleridge,  but  it  only 
served  to  introduce  a  vein  of  mawkishness  into 
his  first  letters,  and  luckily  did  not  endure.  Nor 
was  this  youthful  ideal  of  friendship  unconscious 
with  him.  In  these  days  he  was  writing  his 
tragedy  of  Joh7i  IVoodvil,  which  turns  on  that 
theme. 

I  have  been  meditating  this  half-hour 
On  all  the  properties  of  a  brave  friendship. 
The  mysteries  that  are  in  it,  the  noble  uses, 
Its  limits  withal,  and  its  nice  boundaries — 

says  the  hero  of  the  play,  and  decides  that  it  is 
not  enough  for  a  man  to  die  for  a  friend,  but  he 
must  wantonly  place  himself  in  the  friend's  power 
by  betraying  to  him  a  family  secret. 

There  needed  a  baptism  of  tears — and  gin — to 
bring  Lamb  to  a  kind  of  earthly  regeneration. 
The  tragedy  of  Mary's  life  and  the  disappoint. 


1 68  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

ments  of  his  own  soon  taught  himthehollowness 
of  his  exaltations  ;  the  "  ragged  regiment  "  that 
lured  him  into  London  streets  perfected  the  cure. 
"  Twelve  years  ago,"  he  afterwards  wrote  in  one 
of  his  semi-confessional  essays,  "  I  had  completed 
my  six  and  twentieth  year.  I  had  lived  from  the 
period  of  leaving  school  to  that  time  pretty  much 
in  solitude.  My  companions  were  chiefly  books, 
or  at  most  one  or  two  living  ones  of  my  book- 
loving  and  sober  stamp.  I  rose  early,  went  to 
bed  betimes,  and  the  faculties  which  God  had 
given  me,  I  had  reason  to  think,  did  not  rust  in 
me  unused.  About  that  time  I  fell  in  with  some 
companions  of  a  different  order.  They  were  men 
of  boisterous  spirits,  sitters  up  a-nights,  dis- 
putants, drunken;  yet  seemed  to  have  something 
noble  about  them.  We  dealt  about  the  wit,  or 
what  passes  for  it  after  midnight,  jovially.  Of 
the  quality  called  fancy  I  certainly  possessed  a 
larger  share  than  my  companions.  Encouraged 
by  their  applause,  I  set  up  for  a  profest  joker!  " — 
Yes,  I  fear  it  was  those  contemners  of  the  law, 
Fenwick  and  Fell  (how  their  names  smack  of 
naughtiness!),  that  created  for  us  the  true  Charles 
Lamb. 

To  Lamb  himself  there  must  have  been  a  mali- 
cious joy  in  thinking  that  the  acquaintance  with 
Fenwick  came  through  Godwin,  who  differed 
from  that  disreputable  prowler  in  everything — 
even  in  his  manner  of  taking  gifts.  Immortal 
Fenwick,  whom  we  know  as  Ralph  Bigod,  Esq., 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 69 

setting  forth  in  lyondon  streets,  "  like  some 
Alexander,  upon  his  great  enterprise,  '  borrowing 
and  to  borrow  ! '  " — alas  !  his  lofty  spirit  could  not 
snatch  him  from  the  vulgar  fate  of  mankind;  he 
too  passed  away,  save  in  Lamb's  heroic  epicedium : 

When  I  think  of  this  man  :  his  fiery  glow  of  heart ;  his 
swell  of  feeling  ;  how  magnificent,  how  ideal  he  was  ; 
how  great  at  the  midnight  hour  ;  and  when  I  compare 
with  him  the  companions  with  whom  I  have  associated 
since,  I  grudge  the  saving  of  a  few  idle  ducats,  and  think 
that  I  am  fallen  into  the  society  of  lenders,  and  little 
men. 

R.  Fell,  also,  a  man  of  humbler  genius,  we 
surmise,  came  to  Lamb  through  Godwin ;  and 
Southey  tells  that  once,  when  the  Philosopher  in 
his  own  room  had  dropped  asleep  before  them, 
"  they  carried  off  his  rum,  brandy,  sugar,  picked 
his  pockets  of  everything,  and  made  off  in 
triumph." 

These,  then,  were  the  mystagogues  who  initi- 
ated Lamb  back  into  humanity.  "  He  found 
them,"  as  he  was  to  write  of  those  days  in  remi- 
niscence, "  floating  on  the  surface  of  society; 
and  the  colour,  or  something  else,  in  the  weed 
pleased  him.  The  burrs  stuck  to  him — but  they 
were  good  and  loving  burrs  for  all  that.  He  never 
greatly  cared  for  the  society  of  what  are  called 
good  people.  If  any  of  these  were  scandalised 
(and  offences  were  sure  to  arise),  he  could  not 
help  it." 

One  must  allow,  of  course,  for  the  note  of  mis- 


170  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

chievous  exaggeration  in  all  these  retrospective 
confessions,  but  a  period  of  retirement  at  Newgate 
vouches  for  the  character  of  Fell,  and  L,amb's 
own  whilom  elevation  in  the  stocks  shows  that  his 
amusements  may  at  least  have  been  rather  tumult- 
uous. He  came  out  of  these  experiences  the  most 
immaculate  of  roues,  let  us  say;  the  sweetest  and 
most  exemplary  of  sinners.  Henceforth  to  the 
physical  responsibilities  of  life  he  suljmits  bravely, 
almost  heroically,  yet  in  his  mind  he  "  yearns 
after  and  covets  what  soothes  the  frailty  of  human 
nature."  I  like  to  think  of  his  later  associations, 
except  for  their  beautiful  fidelity,  in  those  lines  of 
Buripides  : 

Full  many  things  the  days  have  taught : 

I  know  that  mortal  men  should  rest 

In  moderate  friendships,  know  how  fraught 

With  fear  the  raptures  of  the  breast ; 

Safer  these  unions  of  the  mind. 

When  light  to  loose  and  swift  to  bind.  .  .  . 

The  unyielding  rules  of  life,  they  say, 

Bring  more  of  peril  than  of  pleasure, 

And  on  the  body  prey ; 

So  I  commend  the  golden  measure, 

The  too-much  put  away. 

Brave  and  learned  men  were  among  Lamb's 
friends,  but  in  his  chambers  they  met  together  to 
confute  philosophy  with  a  pun,  and  to  pack 
wisdom  into  a  jest.  Good  and  sustained  conver- 
sation there  often  was,  but  no  rigour  of  logic  (this 
was  reserved  for  the  game),  and  above  all  no 
crabbed  politics.     These  Attic  nights  in  the  Inner 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  f/l 

Temple  or  Mitre  Court  or  Southampton  Buildings, 
wherever  I^amb's  shifting  tabernacle  might  be, 
were  a  kind  of  Shandean  escape  from  the  world, 
where  fancy  guided  to  a  purer  virtue  than  the 
harsh  commands  of  conscience  know. 

We  have  received  many  accounts  of  his  famous 
Wednesday  evenings,  and  from  these  and  from 
other  writings  we  might  piece  together  a  kind  of 
composite  and  half-fantastic  picture,  in  defiance 
of  time  and  place.  There  are  two  rooms  for  the 
reception  of  visitors,  his  summer  and  winter 
parlours  as  he  calls  them,  in  one  of  which  he  has 
hung  up  a  choice  collection  of  Hogarth's  plates  in 
narrow  black  frames,  as  if  even  here  he  must  have 
the  dear  pathos  and  humour  of  the  streets  about 
him.  In  the  other  room  he  has  nailed  up  a  book- 
case, new  now,  but  with  more  aptitudes  for  grow- 
ing old  than  you  shall  often  see  ;  and  this  is  well, 
for  the  books  are  ancient  and  worn,  another 
"ragged  regiment"  from  which  he  will  never 
wean  himself.  The  furniture  is  suitably  old- 
fashioned  and  mellowed  by  use,  and  the  low  ceil- 
ing shows  traces  of  the  great  plant — 

Brother  of  Bacchus,  later  born. 
The  old  world  was  sure  forlorn. 
Wanting  thee,  that  aidest  more 
The  god's  victories  than  before 
All  his  panthers,  and  the  brawls 
Of  his  piping  Bacchanals. 

But  Bacchus  himself  is  not  absent,  if  a  vast  jug 
of  porter  on  a  side  table  may  be  under  the  tutelage 


172  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

of  that  god.  And  there  are  cold  veal  pie  and 
smoking-hot  potatoes,  under  the  care  of  what  deity 
I  know  not,  laid  out  on  the  same  board.  As 
yet  the  guests  are  few,  and  the  porter  vanishes 
slowly;  but  later  the  jug  will  need  many  repleuish- 
ings  from  the  foaming  pots  which  the  best  tap  of 
Fleet  Street  supplies.  Whist  has  already  begun. 
At  a  table  I^amb  sits  opposite  Martin  Burney, 
nephew  of  the  great  Madame  D'Arblay — strange, 
blundering,  obstinate,  grotesque-looking,  innocent 
Martin,  like  a  second  Goldsmith,  "on  the  top 
scale  of  my  friendship  ladder, "  (says  Lamb  of  him 
once,)  "  on  which  an  angel  or  two  is  still  climb- 
ing." To  the  right  of  Lamb  you  may  see  God- 
win, his  face  retaining  its  aspect  of  wooden 
gravity;  but  trust  it  not,  for  his  mind  is  intently 
on  the  game,  and  he  is  watching  the  play  of  his 
partner — Mrs.  Battle,  shall  we  call  her  ? — who  is 
sitting  bolt  upright,  with  a  lingering  scowl  on  her 
brow  from  some  unwarrantable  levity  of  the  host. 
Is  it  possible  that  Lamb  has  just  ventured  his 
immortal  rebuke  to  Martin:  "  If  dirt  was  trumps 
what  a  hand  you'd  hold  "  ? 

But  the  hour  grows  late  and  other  guests  are 
gathering, — Captain  Burney,  Martin's  father, 
who  has  sailed  over  the  world  with  Captain  Cook 
and  has  made  a  pun  in  theOtaheite  language,  "  a 
better  recommendation  as  a  companion  than  all  his 
honours  of  exploration  or  of  war"  ;  Jem  White, 
the  author  of  the  Falstaff  Letters,  in  which  some 
of  Lamb's  own  wit  lies  buried,   more  famous  for 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 73 

his  annual  feast  of  chimney-sweepers  ;  George 
Dyer,  most  absent-minded  and  incorrigible  of 
book-worms,  a  kind  of  unanoiuted  Coleridge. 
Dyer,  said  Hazlitt,  "hangs  like  a  film  and  cobweb 
upon  letters,  or  like  the  dust  on  the  outside  of 
knowledge,  which  should  not  too  rudely  be 
brushed  aside,"  And  it  was  this  same  celestial 
bungler  who  walked  out  of  Lamb's  house  at  Isling- 
ton in  broad  day  straight  into  a  stream  of  water, 
furnishing  thereby  a  modern  instance  of  Plato's 
philosopher  who  falls  into  a  well  while  looking  at 
the  sky,  and  affording  Elia  the  subject  of  one  of 
his   most    humorous    essays.     "  For    with    G. 

D to  be  absent  from  the  body  is  sometimes 

(not  to  speak  profanely)  to  be  present  with  the 
lyord.  At  the  very  time  when,  personally 
encountering  thee,  he  passes  on  with  no  recogni- 
tion— or,  being  stopped,  starts  like  a  thing  sur- 
prised— at  that  moment,  reader,  he  is  on  Mount 
Tabor — or  Parnassus — or  co-sphered  with  Plato." 
And  Hazlitt  strides  awkwardly  in,  with  his  coarse 
hair  thrown  back  and  his  eyes  ablaze.  He  is  a  si- 
lent man  often,  looking  with  surly  suspicion  upon 
all  about  him;  but  at  times,  as  now,  that  self-de- 
vouring soul  of  his  breaks  out  in  a  savage,  over- 
whelming eloquence.  "  I  get  no  conversation  in 
London  that  is  absolutely  worth  attending  to  but 
his,"  says  Lamb,  who  alone  of  all  refuses  to  quarrel 
with  him.  To-night  he  is  brimming  with  indig- 
nation against  Gifford,  the  editor  of  the  Quarterly. 
You  can  hear  him   beating  out  his  rage  in  the 


174  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

next  room:  "  This  hired  assassin  of  the  Govern- 
ment," he  exclaims,  "  has  grown  old  in  the 
service  of  corruption.  He  drivels  on  to  the  last 
with  prostituted  impotence  and  shameless  effront- 
ery ;  salves  a  meagre  reputation  for  wit,  by  venting 
the  driblets  of  his  spleen  and  impertinence  on 
others  ;  answers  their  arguments  by  confuting 
himself ;  mistakes  habitual  obtuseness  of  intellect 
for  a  particular  acuteness,  not  to  be  imposed  upon 
by  shallow  appearances  ;  unprincipled  rancor  for 
zealous  loyalty  ;  and  the  irritable,  discontented, 
vindictive,  peevish  effusions  of  bodily  pain  and 
mental  imbecility  for  proofs  of  refinement  of  taste 
and  strength  of  understanding. ' '  The  tirade  prom- 
ises to  go  on  endlessly,  swelling  with  fury 
against  the  universal  corruption  of  taste,  when 
Ivamb,  who  has  left  his  party  at  the  whist  table, 
breaks  in  with  a  stuttering  echo  :  ' '  Damn  the  age ! 
I  will  write  for  antiquity";  and  the  tension  is 
dissolved  in  laughter.  Even  pale,  earnest  Charles 
lyloyd,  who  is  discoursing  with  lycigh  Hunt  in  a 
corner  over  "  fate,  free-will,  fore-knowledge  abso- 
lute," forgets  his  melancholy  argument  and  joins 
the  larger  group. 

As  the  circle  gathers  about  their  host  you  will 
observe  how  slight  and  short  he  is  in  comparison 
with  their  bulkier  forms, — ' '  a  light  frame, ' '  wrote 
one  of  them  afterwards,  "so  fragile  that  it  seemed 
as  if  a  breath  would  overthrow  it."  Perhaps  the 
clerkly  black  of  his  dress,  and  the  wearing  of 
small-clothes  and  stockings  which  other  men  are 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1 75 

discarding  for  pantaloons,  exaggerate  his  slender 
appearance.  But  his  head  and  face  are  nobly 
formed,  of  a  Jewish  cast,  you  may  say,  with  dark 
hair  crisping  about  the  forehead,  and  soft  brown 
eyes,  the  two  not  quite  of  the  same  colour  if  you 
look  closely,  and  delicately  carved  nose.  Who 
shall  describe  the  meaning  and  expression  of  his 
countenance,  as  he  glances  from  one  friend  to 
another  ?  Who  shall  catch  its  quivering  sweet- 
ness, andfixit  forever  in  words? — the  deep  thought 
striving  with  humour,  the  lines  of  suffering 
wreathed  into  cordial  mirth,  the  dignity  and 
gravity  of  his  brow.  There  is  a  diversion  as  the 
solid,  plump,  governmental  figure  of  John  Rick- 
man  is  seen  at  the  door,  Rickman  who  lives  in 
the  same  Buildings,  immediately  opposite,  and 
who  has  a  pleasant  habit  of  dropping  in  at  a  late 
hour  when  the  crust  of  the  evening  is  broken. 
"  A  fine  rattling  fellow,"  whispers  Lamb  as  he 
approaches  the  group,  ' '  who  has  gone  through 
life  laughing  at  solemn  apes  ;  himself  hugely 
literate  oppressively  full  of  information  in  all  stufi^ 
of  conversation,  from  matter-of-fact  to  Xenophon 
and  Plato,  and  can  talk  Greek  with  Porson, 
politics  with  Thehvall,  conjecture  with  George 
Dyer  here,  nonsense  with  me,  and  anything  with 
anybody."  Greetings  and  a  jest  or  two  pass, 
and  then  lyamb,  with  a  side  glance  at  Dyer, 
breaks  into  solemn  matter.  "  Ah,  Rickman," 
says  he,  "  here  's  Manning  writing  from  his  anti- 
podal home  in  Canton,  and  wants  your  help  in  a 


176  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

matter  of  exquisite  learning,  viz.,  whether  Ho- 
hing-tong  shall  be  spelt  with  an  o  or  an  a." 
While  Ricknaan  is  collecting  his  wits  to  retort, 
Lamb  has  shuffled  away  to  his  desk  and  has  taken 
out  a  sheet  of  paper  half  written  over  in  the  neat 
hand  he  has  learned  at  the  India  House.  It 
is  the  celebrated  Christmas  letter  to  Manning 
not  yet  sent  on  its  voyage  across  the  seas,  and  he 
begins  to  read,  stammering  a  little  at  first  (if 
indeed  I  might  hear  that  voice  and  see  that 
group  !): 

In  sober  sense  what  makes  you  so  long  from  among  us. 
Manning  ?  You  must  not  expect  to  see  the  same  England 
again  which  you  left.  .  .  .  Your  friends  have  all  got 
old — those  you  left  blooming ;  myself,  (who  am  one  of  the 
few  that  remember  you,)  those  golden  hairs  which  you 
recollect  my  taking  a  pride  in,  turned  to  silvery  and  grey. 
Mary  has  been  dead  and  buried  many  years :  she  desired 
to  be  buried  in  the  silk  gown  you  sent  her.  [She  is  wear- 
ing it  this  evening,  as  we  see!]  Rickman,  that  you  re- 
member active  and  strong,  now  walks  out  supported  by  a 
servant  maid  and  a  stick.  Martin  Burney  is  a  very  old 
man.  .  .  .  Poor  Godwin!  I  was  passing  his  tomb 
the  other    day  in  Cripplegate  churchyard.     There  are 

some  verses  upon  it  written  by  Miss  ,  which  if  I 

thought  good  enough  I  would  send  you.  He  was  one  of 
those  who  would  have  hailed  your  return,  not  with 
boisterous  shouts  and  clamours,  but  with  the  complacent 
gratulations  of  a  philosopher  anxious  to  promote  know- 
ledge as  leading  to  happiness ;  but  his  systems  and  his 
theories  are  ten  feet  deep  in  Cripplegate  mould.  Cole- 
ridge is  just  dead,  having  lived  just  long  enough  to  close 
the  eyes  of  Wordsworth,  who  paid  the  debt  to  Nature  but 
a  week  or  two  before.      Poor  Col.,  but  two  days  before  he 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  1  77 

died  he  wrote  to  a  bookseller,  proposing  an  epic  poem 
ou  the  Wanderings  of  Cai7t,  in  twenty-four  books.  It  is 
said  he  has  left  behind  him  more  than  forty  thousand 
treatises  in  criticism,  metaphysics,  aud  divinity,  but  lew 
of  them  in  a  state  of  completion .  They  are  now  destined, 
perhaps,  to  wrap  up  spices.  You  see  what  mutations  the 
busy  hand  of  Time  has  produced. 

So  the  drollery  runs.  And  now  the  mystic 
hour  arrives  ;  the  punch  is  mixed  and  hot  water 
is  brought  in  for  the  brandy.  The  talk  grows  iu 
volume,  and  the  quick  jest  rattles  merrily  above 
the  wild  paradox  and  the  sober  criticism.  Lamb, 
with  a  wistful  look  at  his  sister,  has  hghted 
another  pipe,  his  fifth,  and  she,  knowing  the 
consequence,  lays  a  warning  hand  on  his  shoulder. 
"Nay,"  he  ejaculates,  "  let  me  alone  ;  I  would 
wish  that  my  last  breath  might  be  through  a 
pipe  and  exhaled  in  a  pun." 

But  even  the  banquets  of  the  gods  must  end. 
One  after  another  of  the  guests  has  shot  his  part- 
ing arrow  and  passed  out  into  the  night.  And  at 
last  the  few  who  are  left  draw  about  the  dying 
fire,  letting  their  talk  drift  to  those  solemn 
intimate  things  that  haunt  the  mind  in  such 
moments  of  relaxation.  Death  is  named,  and  the 
irony  of  life  and  the  recompense  of  the  grave,  and 
Lamb,  with  a  slight  shudder,  takes  up  the  word: 
"Sun,  and  sky,  and  breeze,  and  solitary  walks, 
and  summer  holidays,  and  the  greenness  of  fields, 
and  the  delicious  juices  of  meats  and  fishes,  and 
society,  and  the  cheerful  glass,  and  candle-light, 


178  SHELBURNE  ESSAYS 

and  fireside  conversations,  and  innocent  vanities, 
and  jest,  and  iro7iy  itself  —^o  these  things  go  out 
with  life  ?  Can  a  ghost  laugh,  or  shake  his  gaunt 
sides,  when  you  are  pleasant  with  him?  And 
you,  my  midnight  darlings,  my  folios  !  must  I 
part  with  the  intense  delight  of  having  you  (huge 
arrafuls)  in  my  embraces  ?  Must  knowledge  come 
to  me,  if  it  come  at  all,  by  some  awkward  experi- 
ment of  intuition,  and  no  longer  by  the  familiar 
process  of  reading?  Shall  I  enjoy  friendships 
there,  wanting  the  smiling  indications  which 
point  me  to  them  here — the  recognisable  face—  the 
'sweet  assurance  of  a  look ?'  " 

He  has  risen  now,  and  breaks  off  with  a 
gesture  and  a  smile  of  winsome  pathos ;  and 
the  little  band  silently  separates.  Not  often 
does  their  host  so  unlock  the  treasures  of  his 
heart. 

More  than  criticism,  I  think,  we  need  the 
impression  of  such  scenes  as  this  on  our  mind  ;  we 
need  to  know  how  L,amb  lived  with  these  friends, 
and  how  in  their  society  and  in  the  scarcely  less 
human  companionship  of  books  he  made  for 
himself  a  refuge,  an  evasion,  if  you  will,  from  the 
realities  of  life.  For  we  do  not  go  to  his  Essays 
and  IvCtters  primarily  for  transcendence  of 
intellect  or  creative  genius,  but  for  this  spirit  of 
illusory  friendliness  that  runs  through  them  all, 
lending  to  our  mortal  cloak  of  frailties  and 
humilities  a  beauty  that  is  almost  a  beatitude. 
The  material  for  this  knowledge  Mr.  Lucas  has 


CHARLES    LAMB    AGAIN  I  79 

given  us  in  generous  abundance,  and,  so  doing, 
has  brought  L,amb  a  little  nearer  to  us  than  he 
was  before. 


WALT  WHITMAN 

It  is  ill  dealing  with  the  prophets.  They 
themselves  may  be  approachable,  serene,  and 
simple,  but  about  them  their  disciples  soon  cast 
such  a  mirage  of  words  that  the  seeker  is  blinded 
and  baffled,  if  he  is  not  utterly  repelled.  And 
denying  what  the  disciples  say,  one  fears  the 
rebuke  of  denying  the  great  principles  whose 
names  they  usurp.  You  may  read  in  Mr. 
Burroughs  or  Mr.  O'Connor  or  Dr.  Bucke  and  feel 
so  strong  a  repulsion  for  their  idol  that  only  a 
copious  draught  direct  from  the  Leaves  of  Grass 
or  the  Specimen  Days  will  restore  your  mind  to 
equilibrium.  Yet  it  is  fair  now  to  add  that,  by 
eliminating  himself  and  allowing  Whitman  to 
speak  his  own  words,  Mr.  Horace  Traubel,  cer- 
tainly one  of  the  least  tolerable  of  these  en- 
thusiasts, has  given  us  a  book  of  some  im- 
portance,' a  daily  record  of  intercourse  during 
four  months  with  his  master,  when  old  and 
paralytic  and  waiting  for  the  outward  tide. 

Here  we  may  meet  the  "  good  grey  poet "  just 

'  With  Walt  Whitman  in  Camden.  (March  28-July 
14,  1888.)  By  Horace  Traubel.  Boston:  Small, 
Maynard,  &  Co.,  1906. 

180 


WALT    WHITMAN  l8l 

as  he  was  in  his  Httle  house  in  Mickle  Street, 
Camden;  may  sit  with  him  in  his  chamber  in  the 
midst  of  its  indescribable  confusion,  and  hear  him 
talk,  "  garrulous  to  the  very  last."  "  There  is  all 
sorts  of  debris  scattered  about,"  says  the  diary, 
"bits  of  manuscript,  letters,  newspapers,  books. 
Near  bj'-  his  elbow  towards  the  window  a  wash- 
basket  filled  with  such  stuff.  Lady  Mount  Tem- 
ple's waistcoat  [a  gift  to  Whitman  from  England] 
was  thrown  carelessly  on  the  motley  table — a 
Blake  volume  was  used  by  him  for  a  footstool:  near 
by  a  copy  of  De  Kay's  poems  given  by  Gilder  to 
Rhys.  Various  other  books.  A  Dickens  under 
his  elbow  on  the  chair.  He  pushed  the  books 
here  and  there  several  times  this  evening  in  his 
hunt  for  particular  papers.  *  This,'  he  said  once, 
*is  not  so  much  a  mess  as  it  looks:  you  notice  that 
I  find  most  of  the  things  I  look  for  and  without 
much  trouble.'  "  As  a  matter  of  fact,  his  usual 
method  of  hunting  was  to  rummage  with  his  stick 
among  the  papers  on  the  floor  until  the  desired 
object  came  to  the  surface.  Meanwhile,  what 
other  chance  treasures  floated  up  ! — letters  from 
Tennyson,  Sj'monds,  Roden  Noel,  Lord  Hough- 
ton, Dowden,  and  many  another  stout  admirer 
across  the  sea,  all  which  were  passed  over  to  Mr. 
Traubel  and  bj'-  him  duly  transcribed  for  our 
perusal.  What  will  surprise  most  readers  of  the 
diar)''  is  the  predominance  of  this  bookish  talk; 
and,  except  where  his  own  work  is  concerned, 
Whitman   shows   himself  a   trenchant   and   just 


l82  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

critic — as  might  be  inferred  from  his  essays  on 
Carlyle  and  Burns.  One  could  wish  that  he  did 
not  so  often  fall  into  the  trick  common  among  the 
ill-educated  of  denouncing  criticism  while  them- 
selves exercising  that  function.  It  was,  for  exam- 
ple, not  gracious  to  complain  of  Mr.  Stedman  for 
weighing  him  in  the  critical  balance,  when  he 
himself  was  subjecting  writer  after  writer  to  the 
same  process.  And  again,  in  a  larger  sense, 
though  we  may  after  a  fashion  understand  his 
distinction,  there  is  almost  a  touch  of  insincerity 
in  the  constant  segregation  of  himself  from  litera- 
ture and  the  literary  class.  After  all,  a  book  's  a 
book  however  much  there's  in  't,  and  the  whole 
ambition  of  Whitman's  life  was  in  his  authorship. 
More  than  that,  we  remember  how  many  times  in 
the  Leaves  of  Grass  he  declares  that  the  justifica- 
tion of  America  shall  be  her  poets  ;  and  what 
student  of  the  closet  would  have  dared,  as  he  did 
in  his  lectuie  on  the  Death  of  Abraham  Lincoln^ 
to  reduce  the  whole  desperate  terror  of  the  war  to 
the  needs  of  the  literary  imagination  ? — 

I  say,  certain  secondary  and  indirect  results,  out  of  the 
tragedy  of  this  death,  are,  in  my  opinion,  greatest.  Not 
the  event  of  the  murder  itself.  Not  that  Mr.  Lincoln 
strings  the  principal  points  and  personages  of  the  period, 
like  beads,  upon  the  single  thread  of  his  career.  Not 
that  his  idiosyncrasy,  in  its  sudden  appearance  and  dis- 
appearance, stamps  this  republic  with  a  stamp  more 
mark'd  and  enduring  than  any  yet  given  by  any  one  man 
—  (more  even  than  Washington's;) — but.join'd  with  these, 
the   immeasurable    value  and    meaning  of  that  whole 


WALT    WHITMAN  183 

tragedy  lies,  to  tne,  in  senses  finally  dearest  to  a  nation, 
(and  here  all  our  own) — the  imaginative  and  artistic 
senses — the  literary  and  dramatic  ofies.  Not  in  any  com- 
mon or  low  meaning  of  those  terms,  but  a  meaning 
precious  to  the  race,  and  to  every  age.  A  long  and  varied 
series  of  contradictory  events  arrives  at  last  at  its  highest 
poetic,  single,  central,  pictorial  denouement.  The  whole 
involved,  bafifliug,  multiform  whirl  of  the  secession  period 
comes  to  a  head,  and  is  gather'd  in  one  brief  flash  of 
lightning-illumination — one  simple,  fierce  deed.  Its 
sharp  culmination,  and  as  it  were  solution,  of  so  many 
bloody  and  angry  problems,  illustrates  those  climax- 
moments  on  the  stage  of  universal  Time,  where  the  his- 
toric Muse  at  one  entrance,  and  the  tragic  Muse  at  the 
other,  suddenly  ringing  down  the  curtain,  close  an  im- 
mense act  in  the  long  drama  of  creative  thought,  and 
give  it  radiation,  tableau,  stranger  than  fiction.  Fit 
radiation — fit  close!  How  the  imagination — how  the 
student  loves  these  things! 

I  am  not  sure  but  a  complete  critique  of  Whit- 
man's own  methods  as  a  poet,  with  his  wanton 
neglect  of  those  "climax-moments,"  might  be 
read  in  such  a  passage  as  this.  Certainly,  a  recol- 
lection of  this  more  consciously  artistic  side  of  the 
man  should  be  carried  with  us  when  we  enter  the 
little  Mickle  Street  house  with  Mr.  Traubel. 
There  we  shall  see  a  wearied  invalid,  lotinging 
nonchalantly  and  speaking  the  patois  of  the 
pavement,  yet  withal,  if  our  ears  are  prepared, 
still  the  poet  and  seer.  Other  poets  have  narrowed 
and  grown  dogmatic  with  age,  but  to  Whitman 
we  feel  that  time  has  brought  only  sweetness  and 
breadth;  and  this  perhaps,  despite  the  triviality 


184  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

of  much  of  the  record  and  its  childlike  egotism, 
despite  the  fact  that  the  deeper  meanings  of  Whit- 
man's mind  were  quite  dark  to  the  disciple,  is 
the  last  impression  of  Mr.  Traubel's  book.  One 
pictures  the  old  man  as  looking  like  the  bust  by 
Sidney  Morse,  which  Whitman  seems  to  have 
regarded  as  the  best  portrait  of  himself,  and  which 
resembles  curiously  the  so-called  head  of  Homer — 

with  the  broad  suspense 
Oi  lifted  brows,  and  lips  intense 
Of  garrulous  god-innocence. 

And  one  observes  a  little  trait  often  mentioned  by 
the  disciple: — when  the  conversation  takes  a  more 
solemn  tone,  the  master  breaks  off  and  turns  his 
eyes  to  the  window,  gazing  into  what  vista  of 
thought,  who  shall  say?  It  is  a  pretty  symbol  of 
that  "withdrawnness  "  of  spirit,  to  use  his  own 
word,  which  those  nearest  to  him  never  under- 
stood. Almost  the  only  signs  of  petulance  during 
these  days  of  suffering  came  when  his  more 
fanatical  friends  tried  to  imprison  him  within  the 
circle  of  their  reforming  dogmas.  He  would 
remain  fluid  to  the  end. 

From  this  closing  scene  we  may  travel  back 
over  the  earlier  years  in  the  first  adequate 
biography    of    Whitman*    yet     published.     Mr. 

A  Life  of  Walt  Whitman.  By  Henry  Bryan  Binns. 
New  York:  E.  P.  Button  &  Co.,  1905.— Since  the  writing 
of  this  essay  Mr.  Bliss  Perry's  sober  and  succinct  bio- 
graphy has  appeared.     Houghton,  Mifflin,  &  Co.,  1906. 


WALT    WHITMAN  185 

Binns,  a  worshipping  young  Englishman  who 
still  retains  some  leaven  of  common  sense, 
has  skilfully  thrown  into  relief  the  capital 
moments  of  Whitman's  career,  particularly  that 
obscure  period  when  he  was  formulating  his  new 
art.  We  see  Whitman,  first  as  a  writer  of  meagre 
talent,  promising  to  develop  into  a  lesser  Poe  or 
Hawthorne  ;  then  a  time  of  silence,  and  suddenly, 
in  the  year  1855,  in  the  exact  mezzo  cammm  of  his 
life,  he  prints  the  first  issue  of  that  extraordinary 
book,  the  Leaves  of  Grass,  with  its  dithyrambic 
annunciation  of  the  wedding  of  Romantic  indi- 
vidualism with  sentimental  democracy : 

I  celebrate  myself,  and  sing  myself, 

And  what  I  assume  you  shall  assume. 

For  every  atom  belonging  to  me  as  good  belongs  to  you. 

I  loafe  and  invite  my  soul, 

I  lean  and  loafe  at  my  ease  observing  a  spear  of  summer 
grass. 

What  happened  during  those  years  of  gestation  ? 
From  himself  we  know  only  that  one  February 
day  in  1848  he  received  an  invitation  to  go  to 
New  Orleans  and  edit  the  Crescent ;  that  he  set 
off"  with  his  brother  Jeff",  and  proceeded  leisurely 
through  the  Middle  States,  and  down  the  Ohio 
and  Mississippi  Rivers;  that  he  lived  in  New 
Orleans  for  some  months,  and  then  plodded  back 
northward,  up  the  Mississippi  and  the  Missouri, 
by  the  Great  Lakes,  and  down  the  Hudson  to 
Brooklyn   once    more,    where    for    a    while   he 


I  86  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

worked  again  as  printer  and  as  builder,  but  inter- 
mittently and  with  his  heart  elsewhere.  We  know 
that  during  these  seven  or  eight  years  he  was 
writing  and  rewriting,  casting  about  for  a  form 
proper  to  his  ideas,  and  that  he  "  had  great  trouble 
in  leaving  out  the  stock  *  poetical '  touches. "  But 
of  the  deeper  motives  at  work  we  hear  from  him- 
self nothing.  Mr.  Binns  finds  in  the  enlargement 
of  Whitman's  mental  horizon  by  travel  one  of  the 
main  causes  of  his  poetical  conversion,  and  with 
this  he  connects  that  shadowy  passion  which 
somewhere  lies  in  the  background  of  the  poet's 
experience,  alluded  to  more  than  once,  but  never 
fully  revealed.  It  seems  that  about  this  time 
Whitman  formed  an  intimate  relationship  with  a 
Southern  lady  of  higher  social  rank  than  his  own, 
who  became  the  mother  of  his  child,  perhaps,  in 
after  years,  of  his  children;  and  that  he  was  pre- 
vented by  family  prejudice  or  some  other  obstacle 
from  marriage  or  the  acknowledgment  of  his 
paternity.  One  would  like  to  connect  this  incident 
with  the  fair  portrait  over  his  mantel  in  Mickle 
Street — "an  old  sweetheart  of  mine,"  as  he  once 
said  in  the  presence  of  Mr.  Traubel,  "a  sweet- 
heart, many,  many,  years  ago."  But  when 
asked  whether  she  was  still  living,  he  seemed 
profoundly  stirred,  and  lapsed  into  his  usual 
reticence.  "He  closed  his  eyes,  shook  his  head  : 
*I  'd  rather  not  say  anything  more  about  that  just 
now.'  "  All  this  is  involved  in  conjecture,  yet 
such  an   experience  would  help  to  explain  the 


WALT   WHITMAN  187 

emotional  intensifying  of  his  self-consciousness 
which  joins  with  the  broadening  of  his  national- 
consciousness  to  inspire  the  Leaves  of  Grass. 

We  may  be  thankful  for  these  hints  from  Mr. 
Binns  and  Mr.  Traubel,  but  the  best  commentary 
on  Whitman,  apart  from  this  period  of  gestation, 
is  still  his  own  Specimen  Days,  one  of  the  most 
remarkable  autobiographies  ever  written,  despite 
a  certain  tediousness  due  to  its  paucity,  not 
poverty,  of  ideas,  and  its  ejaculatory  language. 
The  external  elements  that  moulded  his  character 
are  here  set  forth  with  extreme  precision — first  of 
all  the  sturdy  English  and  Dutch  stock,  thor- 
oughly Americanised,  from  which  he  sprung,  and 
then  the  old  homestead  in  the  garden  spot  of  Long 
Island.  Not  far  off  lay  the  Great  South  Bay,  and 
beyond  that  the  sandy  bars  and  the  ever-beating 
Atlantic.  All  the  sights  and  sounds  of  the  sea 
entered  into  the  child's  heart  and  spoke  in  the 
songs  of  the  man.  As  a  boy,  he  longed  to  write 
a  book  which  should  express  "this  liquid,  mystic 
theme,"  and  in  old  age  his  nights  were  haunted 
with  a  vision  "of  interminable  white-brown  sand, 
hard  and  smooth  and  broad,  with  the  ocean  per- 
petually, grandly,  rolling  in  upon  it,  with  slow- 
measured  sweep,  with  rustle  and  hiss  and  foam, 
and  many  a  thump  of  low  bass  drums."  Of  all 
his  poems,  the  most  personal,  perhaps  the  only 
one  filled  with  passion  as  the  world  understands 
passion,  is  that  incomparable  rhapsody.  Out  of 
the   Cradle  Endlessly  Rocking,   which    tells   how 


l88  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

once,  in  the  month  of  lilacs,  he  listened  by  the 
beach  to  a  mocking-bird  complaining  of  its  lost 
mate,  and  in  the  cry  of  the  bird  and  the  lisp  of 
the  waves  heard  the  two  riddling  words  of  fate  : 

Yes,  when  the  stars  glisten 'd. 

All  night  long  on  the  prong  of  a  moss-scallop'd  stake, 

Down  almost  amid  the  slapping  waves. 

Sat  the  lone  singer  wonderful  causing  tears. 

He  call'd  on  his  mate, 

He  pour'd  forth  the  meanings  which  I  of  all  men  know. 

Yes  my  brother  I  know. 

The  rest  might  not,  but  I  have  treasur'd  every  note, 
For  more  than  once  dimly  down  to  the  beach  gliding. 
Silent,  avoiding  the  moonbeams,  blending  myself  with 

the  shadows. 
Recalling  now  the  obscure  shapes,  the  echoes,  the  sounds 

and  sights  after  their  sorts. 
The  white  arms  out  in  the  breakers  tirelessly  tossing, 
I,  with  bare  feet,  a  child,  the  wind  wafting  my  hair, 
Listen'd  long  and  long. 

Soothe!  Soothe!  Soothe! 

Close  on  its  wave  soothes  the  wave  behind. 

And  again  another  behind  embracing  and  lapping,  every 

otie  close. 
But  my  love  soothes  not  me,  not  me. 

Loza  hangs  the  moon,  it  rose  late. 

It  is  lagging — O  I  think   it  is    heavy  with  love,  with 
love. 

O  madly  the  sea  pushes  upon  the  land. 
With  love,  with  love. 

O  night!  do  I  not  see  vty  love  fluttering  out  among  the 
breakers ? 


WALT    WHITMAN  189 

What  is  that  little  black  thing  J  see  there  in  the  white? 

Loud !  loud  !  loud! 

Loud  I  call  to  you  my  love  ! 

A  word  then  (for  I  will  conquer  it), 

The  word  final,  superior  to  all, 

Subtle,  sent  up — what  is  it? — I  listen  ; 

Are  you  whispering  it,  and  have  been  all  the  time,  you 

sea-waves? 
Is  that  it  from  your  liquid  rims  and  wet  sands? 

Whereto  answering,  the  sea, 
Delaying  not,  hurrying  not, 
Whisper'd  me  through  the  night,  and  very  plainly  before 

daybreak, 
lyisp'd  to  me  the  low  and  delicious  word  death. 
And  again  death,  death,  death,  death. 
Hissing  melodious,  neither  like  the  bird  nor  like  my 

arous'd  child's  heart. 
But  edging  near  as  privately  for  me  rustling  at  my  feet. 
Creeping  thence  steadily  up  to  my  ears  and  laving  me 

softly  all  over. 
Death,  death,  death,  death,  death. 

Of  formal  education  Whitman  had  little,  but  he 
was  always  a  miscellaneous  reader  of  books,  and 
he  had  that  peculiar  training  of  the  American  in 
those  years  which  came  from  a  variety  of  occupa- 
tions. Through  the  Specimen  Days  we  catch 
glimpses  of  him  working  desultorilj'  as  type- 
setter, proof-reader,  editor,  writer,  school-teacher, 
carpenter — for  the  most  part  in  Brooklyn,  but 
seeing  a  good  deal  of  the  country,  and  making 
himself  familiar  with  all  the  manifold  life  of  his 
beloved    Manhatta.     It  was  always  the  tides  of 


IQO  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

life  that  attracted  him.  He  had,  as  he  says,  a 
passion  for  ferries,  and  spent  much  of  his  time  on 
these  boats,  often  in  the  pilot-houses,  where  he 
could  get  a  full  sweep  of  the  changing  panorama. 
And  the  moving  stream  of  Broadway  attracted 
him  with  a  like  sympathy;  he  loved  to  lose  him- 
self in  "the  hurrying  and  vast  amplitude  of  those 
never-ending  human  currents,"  or  to  gaze  down 
into  it  from  the  advantage  of  the  omnibus  top. 

The  great  event  in  his  life  was  the  war.  His 
brother  George  had  enlisted  in  the  arm}^,  and  in 
the  battle  of  Fredericksburg  was  wourided.  Walt 
immediately  went  South,  found  his  brother  not 
seriously  injured,  stayed  with  the  army  awhile, 
and  then  in  Washington  made  himself  a  kind  of 
voluntary  nurse  and  friend  in  the  hospital  wards. 
He  passed  from  cot  to  cot  bearing  what  gifts  he 
could  bring,  writing  letters  for  the  feeble,  above 
all  giving  of  himself  out  of  the  bountifulness  of 
his  superb  physical  nature  : 

Behold  I  do  not  give  lectures  or  a  little  charity, 
When  I  give  I  give  myself. 

Many  a  friendless,  broken  lad  was  actually  raised 
by  his  magnetic  sympathy  out  of  the  despair  that 
meant  death;  many  another  found,  in  his  serene 
countenance,  courage  for  the  inevitable  end. 
"Poor  youth,"  he  jots  down  in  his  notebook  of 
these  days,  "so  handsome,  athletic,  with  profuse 
beautiful  shining  hair.  One  time  as  I  sat  look- 
ing at  him  while  he  lay   asleep,   he  suddenly, 


WALT    WHITMAN  I9I 

without  the  least  start,  awaken' d,  open'd  his  eyes, 
gave  me  a  long,  steady  look,  turning  his  face 
slightly  to  gaze  easier — one  long,  clear,  silent 
look —a  slight  sigh — then  turn'd  back  and  went 
into  his  doze  again.  Little  he  knew,  poor  death- 
stricken  boy,  the  heart  of  the  stranger  that  hov- 
er'd  near."  Such  were  the  notes  that  went 
unchanged  into  the  Speci??ien  Days — mere  hasty 
scribblings,  yet  showing  now  and  then  a  rare 
literary  art.  To  me  the  final  moral  impression 
from  these  memoranda  is  the  comforting  assur- 
ance— much  needed  in  the.se  days  of  realistic 
fiction — that  human  nature  is  not  entirely  bestial- 
ised  by  war.  Whitman  describes  the  horrors  of 
the  field  after  a  battle  with  pathetic  vividness,  but 
above  all  he  causes  one  to  feel  the  great  wave  of 
idealism  that  swept  over  the  country,  bringing 
the  hearts  of  men  into  unison,  and  lifting  them 
out  of  themselves  into  a  larger  purpose.  And 
with  this  goes  the  physical  impression  of  endlessly 
marching  troops,  of  interminable  shadowy  pro- 
cessions through  the  lonely  roads  of  Virginia 
and  in  the  streets  of  Washington. 

To  Whitman  himself  there  came  a  deepening 
and  purifying  of  his  nature.  He  gave  generously, 
prodigally,  of  his  sympathy,  and  received  his 
reward  in  the  sure  pos.session  of  peace  ;  but  under 
the  physical  strain  something  broke  within  him. 
From  the  age  of  fifty-four  to  his  death  at  seventy- 
three  (1892),  he  was  an  invalid,  .suffering  more  or 
less  from  paralysis.     He  travelled  somewhat,  but 


192  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

most  of  the  time  he  was  at  his  home  in  Camden, 
or  visiting  at  a  farmhouse  in  the  adjacent  country. 
Henceforth  his  notes  are  largely  made  up  of  his 
communings  with  nature — scraps  hastily  written 
down  out  of  doors,  and  palpitating  at  times  with 
the  immediate  intoxication  of  the  world's  beauty. 
And  this  is  the  end  of  the  record: 

Finally,  the  morality  :  "Virtue,"  said  Marcus  Aurelius, 
"what  is  it,  only  a  living  and  enthusiastic  sympathy 
with  Nature?"  Perhaps,  indeed,  the  efforts  of  the  true 
poets,  founders,  religions,  literatures,  all  ages,  have  been, 
and  ever  will  be,  our  time  and  times  to  come,  essentially 
the  same — to  bring  people  back  from  their  persistent 
strayings  and  sickly  abstractions,  to  the  costless  average, 
divine,  original  concrete. 

Artistically  this  return  to  nature  meant  for 
Whitman  a  revolt  against  the  poetical  conven- 
tions. He  observed — as  who  has  not  ? — a  certain 
hoUowness  in  almost  all  the  poetry  of  the  day, 
owing  to  the  fact  that  it  was  not  rooted  in  the 
realities  of  modern  life.  The  rhythm  was  merely 
pretty,  and  had  lost  its  vital  swing  ;  the  primitive 
habits  which  had  made  it  a  bond  of  union  by  the 
clapping  of  hands  and  the  beating  of  feet  were 
too  far  in  the  past  to  lend  it  any  communal  force.' 

'  Mr.  Bliss  Perry  in  his  Biography  emphasises  the  fact 
that  Whitman  was  not  alone  in  this  metrical  revolt.  In 
particular  he  calls  attention  to  the  remarkable  parallel 
between  Whitman's  work  and  Samuel  Warren's  rhapsody, 
The  Lily  and  the  Bee,  ^:\x\ch.  was  published  in  England 


WALT    WHITMAN  1 93 

And  the  spirit  of  verse  was  equally  a  thing  of  the 
past.  It  was  essentially  a  product  of  feudalism, 
and  Tennyson  was  the  last  pale  flower,  exquisite 
indeed,  but  fragile  and  useless,  of  a  civilisation 
which  had  shown  its  luxuriance  in  Shakespeare. 
In  these  traditions  of  form  and  spirit  the  poet  was 
swathed  until  he  sang  no  longer  as  a  free  individ- 
ual man  in  touch  with  the  universal  currents  of 
life,  but  was  an  empty  echo  of  an  outworn  age,  a 
simulacrum  (this  was  the  word  Whitman  applied 
to  Swinburne)  of  vanished  emotions.  To  restore 
poetry  to  its  dominion  over  the  present,  therefore. 
Whitman  would  first  of  all  abrogate  the  accepted 
rules  of  rhythm,  and  would  allow  his  lines  to 
swing,  so  he  thought,  with  the  liquid  abandon  of 
the  waves  and  the  winds.  Feudalism  should  give 
place  to  democracy ;  there  should  be  no  more 
distinctions,  but  all  things  should  be  equally  good 
and  significant,  the  body  with  the  soul,  vice  with 
virtue,  the  ugly  with  the  beautiful,  the  small 
with  the  great.     And  he,  Walt  Whitman,  would 

in  1851,  promptly  republished  by  Harpers,  and  reviewed 
in  Harper's  Monthly  of  November,  1851.  The  rhapsody 
describes  a  day  and  night  passed  in  the  Crystal  Palace, 
but  its  real  subject,  avowed  by  the  author,  is  "Man — a 
unity"  : 

"  In  dusky,  rainless  EgOT**  now  I 
Mysterious  memories  come  crowding  round — 
From  misty  Mizraim  to  Ibrahim- 
Abraham  !  Joseph  !  Pharaoh's  Plagues  ! 
Shepherd  Kings  '  Sesostris  ! 

Cambyses  !  Xerxes  1  Alexander  I  Ptolemies  I  Antony  I  Cleopatral 
Caesar— 


194  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

chant  himself,  lustily  and  unashamed,  as  a 
"simple  separate  person."  So  he  would  lead  the 
people  of  America  back  to  the  costless  average, 
divine,  original  concrete.  Unfortunately,  in  break- 
ing away  from  much  that  was  undoubtedly  a 
sham,  he  forgot  too  often  those  eternal  conven- 
tions which  grow  out  of  the  essential  demands  of 
human  nature.  Rhythm  is  such  a  convention, 
and  where  his  broken  prose  is  of  a  kind  to  strain 
the  ear  in  the  search  for  cadences  which  are  not 
to  be  found,  he  simply,  as  Ben  Jonson  said  of 
Donne,  deserves  hanging  for  not  keeping  accent. 
To  bawl  out  that  things  unlike  are  like,  is  not  to 
make  them  so,  and  a  manly  egotism,  if  too  noisy, 
may  sink  into  mere  fanfaronade.  For  page  after 
page  Whitman  is  rather  a  preacher  of  poetry  than 
a  poet;  and  this  perhaps  may  be  his  final  condem- 
nation, that  he  is  persistently  telling  us  how  the 
true  poem  of  to-day  should  be  written  instead  of 
making  such  a  poem.  Preaching  has  its  uses 
and  may  arouse  the  loftiest  emotions,  but  its  uses 
and  emotions  are  not  those  of  poetry.  The  simple 
truth  is  that  a  large  number  of  Whitman's  so- 


Isis  !    Osiris  !    Temples  !    Sphinxes  !    Obelisks  !    Alexandria  ! 

The  Pyramids. 

The  Nile  ! 

Napoleon  !  Nelson  I 

—Behold,  my  son,  quoth  the  Royal  Mother,  this  ancient 
wondrous  country — destined  scene  of  mighty  doings — per- 
chance of  conflict,  deadly  tremendous,  such  as  the  world 
has    never  seen,  nor  warrior  dreamed  of. 

Even  now  the  attracting  centre  of  world-wide  anxieties. 


WALT   WHITMAN  195 

called  poems  are  not  only  sermons,  but  dull  and 
amorphous  sermons.  If  they  arouse  in  certain 
enthusiasts  any  sensation  beyond  that  of  a  prosaic 
homily,  it  is  because  these  generous  readers  bring 
with  them  the  residual  emotion  arising  from  his 
work  as  a  whole.  Consider  a  few  lines  from  the 
Salut  au  Monde: 

What  do  you  see  Walt  Whitman? 

Who  are  they  you  salute,  and  that  one  after  another 
salute  you. 


I  see  the  places  of  the  sagas, 

I  see  the  pine-trees  and  fir-trees  torn  by  northern  blasts, 

I  see  granite  bowlders  and  cliffs,  I  see  green  meadows 

and  lakes, 
I  see  the  burial-cairns  of  Scandinavian  warriors, 
I  see  them  raised  high  with  stones  by  the  marge  of  the 
restless  oceans,  that  the  dead  men's  spirits  when 
they  wearied  of  their  quiet  graves  might  rise  up 
through  the  mounds  and  gaze  on  the  tossing  bil- 


On  this  spot  see  settled  the  eyes  of  sleepless  Statesmen — 
Lo  !  a  British  engineer,  even  while    I  speak,  connects  the 
Red   Sea    with   the    Mediterranean,  Alexandria  and   Cairo 
made  as  one — 


'  A  unit  unperceived, 
I  sink  into  the  living  stream  again  ! — 
Nave,  transept,  aisles  and  Galleries, 
Pacing  nntired  ;  insatiate  ! 
Touchstone  of  character !  capacity  !  and  knowledge ! 


196  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

lows,  and  be  refreshed  by  storms,  immensity, 
liberty,  action. 

I  see  the  steppes  of  Asia, 

I  see  the  tumuli  of  Mongolia,  I  see  the  tents  of  Kal- 
mucks and  Baskirs, 

I  see  the  nomadic  tribes  with  herds  of  oxen  and  cows, 
etc.,  etc. 

Now  it  so  happens  that  a  contemporary  of  Whit- 
man, who  likewise  undertook  in  his  own  way  to 
vivify  the  enfeebled  rhythms,  and  who  sought,  by 
returning  to  the  spirit  of  Greece,  to  escape  from 
mediaeval  feudalism,  who  wrote  also  much  of  his 
own  feelings  and  was  withal  on  occasion  an  undis- 
guised preacher — it  happens  that  Matthew  Arnold 
in  The  Strayed  Reveller  has  treated  a  very  similar 
theme : 

They  see  the  Centaurs 

In  the  upper  glens 

Of  Pelion,  in  the  streams, 

Where  red-berried  ashes  fringe 


spectacle,  now  lost  in  the  Spectators ;  then  spectators  in  the 
spectacle  ! 

Rich  ;  poor  ;  gentle  ;  simple  ;  wise  ;  foolish  ;  young  ;  old  ;  learned  ; 
ignorant ;  thoughtful ;  thoughUess  ;  haughty.;  humble  ;  frivo- 
lous ;  profound ! " 

Whitman  was  a  great  reader  of  the  magazines  and  no 
doubt  saw  this  poem  just  at  the  time  when  he  was  beating 
about  for  his  own  new  style.  Both  in  form  and  spirit  this 
is  a  really  remarkable  parallel.  There  needs  but  a  touch 
of  genius  to  fit  the  lines  in  with  the  most  characteristic 
of  Whitman's, 


WALT  WHITMAN  1 97 


The  clear-brown  shallow  pools, 
With  streaming  flanks,  and  heads 
Rear'd  proudly,  snuflBng 
The  mountain  wind. 


They  see  the  Scythian 

On  the  wide  stepp,  unharnessing 

His  wheel'd  house  at  noon. 

He  tethers  his  beast  down,  and  makes  his  meal — 

Mares'  milk  and  bread 

Baked  on  the  embers; — all  around 

The  boundless,  waving  grass-plains  stretch,  thick-starr'd 

With  saffron  and  the  yellow  hollyhock 

And  flag-leaved  iris-flowers. 

Is  it  not  plain,  even  from  these  fragmentary- 
quotations,  that  Matthew  Arnold  has  here  accom- 
plished what  Whitman  proposed  as  a  poetical 
task?  that  he  has  transferred  to  the  reader 
the  actual  vision  instead  of  asserting  what  he 
himself  had  seen?  And  a  good  deal  of  Whit- 
man's poetry  is  of  this  rudimentary  sort.  I  find 
jotted  down  in  the  margins  of  my  Leaves  of 
Grass  a  dozen  or  more  of  such  comparisons. 
There  are  lines  in  Autumn  Rivulets  which 
might  be  taken  for  the  first  rough  draft  from 
which  Landor  or  Wordsworth  elaborated  his 
image  of  the  inland  shell;  "Sail,  sail  thy 
best,  ship  of  Democracy,"  sounds  like  a 
sketch  for  Longfellow's  "  Thou,  too,  sail  on, 
O  Ship  of  State";  Shelley's  West  Wind  is 
there  in  embryo,  and  clumsily  distorted  stanzas 


198  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

of  Gray  and  Horace.  In  a  larger  sense  much  of 
his  verse  is  little  more  than  a  lusty  preaching  of 
what  other  men  have  dealt  with  creatively.  His 
proclamation  of  health  is  good  in  its  way,  but 
long  before  him  Scott  had  assimilated  that  doc- 
trine into  the  breathing  characters  of  his  novels. 
I  find  no  harm  in  Whitman's  insistence  on 
unashamed  physical  love,  only  surprise  now  and 
then  to  hear  the  language  of  the  gutter  from  the 
pulpit;  but  for  poetry  I  prefer  Byron's  creative 
assumption  of  that  doctrine  in  the  story  of 
Haidee.  Is  not  all  the  theory  of  Whitman's 
Children  of  Adam  to  be  found  there,  turned  to 
beautiful  uses,  in  that  picture  of  the  two  lovers 
brought  together  by  mother  Nature  in  the  cavern 
by  the  starlit  bay  ?  Indeed,  I  am  not  sure  but  we 
might  go  further  back  and  discover  the  modern 
sermon  distilled  by  Lucretius  into  one  perfect 
sensuous  verse: 

Et  Venus  in  silvis  iungebat  corpora  amantum. 

Were  this  all,  Whitman  might  be  dismissed  to 
Messrs.  Traubel&  Burroughs,  and  to  his  excitable 
British  champions,  without  further  ado;  but  it  is 
by  no  means  all.  Again  and  again  when  Whit- 
man forgets  his  doctrine  and  hearkens  to  his 
inspiration,  he  shows  himself  a  poet  in  the  sim- 
plest acceptation  of  that  term.  There  are  single 
lines  here  and  there,  such  as  the  oft-quoted 
"White  arms  out  in  the  breakeis  tirelessly 
tossing,"  which  have  a  magical  power  of  evoking 


WALT    WHITMAN  I99 

an  image  or  the  memory  of  subtle  sounds  and 
odors.  There  are  phrases,  such  as  his  "vigorous, 
benevolent,  clean,"  that  almost  condense  a  system 
of  morals  into  an  epigram;  paragraphs  that  hold 
the  true  poetic  emotion  and  stand  out  from  their 
context  like  those  half-evolved  figures  of  Rodin 
struggling  from  their  matrix;  short  poems,  such 
as  The  Singer  in  the  Prison,  that  might  take  their 
place  unabashed  in  an}'-  anthology;  long  poems, 
such  as  Out  of  the  Cradle  and  IVhefi  Lilacs  Last, 
that  show  a  grandiose,  if  somewhat  stumbling, 
craftsmanship.  And  it  should  be  observed  that 
his  rhythm  in  these  successful  passages  is  by  no 
means  so  lawless  as  he  himself  and  others  have 
supposed.  Occasionally  it  resembles  the  move- 
ment in  the  short  rhymeless  lines  of  Matthew 
Arnold,  but  in  general  it  is  markedly  dactylic. 
Perfect  hexameters  abound: 

Shouts  of  demoniac  laughter  fitfully  piercing  and  pealing 
and 

Alternate    light    and    day    and    the    teeming   spiritual 
darkness. 

From  these  the  variation  is  gradual — 

Only  the  lull  I  like,  the  hum  of  your  valv^d  voice.    .    .    . 
Curious  in  time  I  stand,  noting  the  efforts  of  heroes.   .    .    . 
In  a  far   away  northern  county  in  the   placid   pastoral 
region — 

to  a  solution  of  the  verse  into  pure  prose.  The 
prevalent  effect  is  that  of  a  hexametric  cadence 


200  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

such  as  probably  preceded  the  regular  schemati- 
sation  of  the  Homeric  poems,  now  following  its 
own  inner  law  at  the  expense  of  external  form, 
and  now  submitting  to  no  law  at  all,  but  sprawl- 
ing in  mere  uncouth  ignorance. 

And  when  he  succeeds,  Whitman  stands 
naturally  with  the  great  and  not  the  minor  poets. 
Take,  for  instance,  these  three  familiar  poems  by 
Browning  and  Tennyson  and  Whitman  on  the 
same  theme,  and  Whitman,  though  not  at  his 
highest  here,  is  still  not  out  of  place: 

Fear  death? — to  feel  the  fog  in  my  throat, 

The  mist  in  my  face, 
When  the  snows  begin,  and  the  blasts  denote 

I  am  nearing  the  place. 
The  power  of  the  night,  the  press  of  the  storm, 

The  post  of  the  foe; 
Where  he  stands,  the  Arch  Fear  in  a  visible  form. 

Yet  the  strong  man  must  go.     .     . 
I  was  ever  a  fighter,  so — one  fight  more, 

The  best  and  the  last! 
I  would  hate  that  death  bandaged  my  eyes,  and  forbore, 

And  bade  me  creep  past ! 
No !  let  me  taste  the  whole  of  it,  fare  like  my  peers 

The  heroes  of  old. 
Bear  the  brunt,  in  a  minute  pay  glad  life's  arrears 

Of  pain,  darkness  and  cold. 
For  sudden  the  worst  turns  the  best  to  the  brave, 

The  black  minute's  at  end. 
And  the  elements'  rage,  the  fiend-voices  that  rave, 

Shall  dwindle,  shall  blend. 
Shall  change,  shall  become  first  a  peace  out  of  pain, 

Then  a  light,  then  thy  breast, 


WALT    WHITMAN  201 

O  thou  soul  of  my  soul !  I  shall  clasp  thee  again, 
And  with  God  be  the  rest  ! 


Sunset  and  evening  star, 

And  one  clear  call  for  me! 
And  may  there  be  no  moaning  of  the  bar, 

When  I  put  out  to  sea, 

But  such  a  tide  as  moving  seems  asleep, 

Too  full  for  sound  and  foam, 
When  that  which  drew  from  out  the  boundless  deep 

Turns  again  home. 

Twilight  and  evening  bell, 

And  after  that  the  dark ! 
And  may  there  be  no  sadness  of  farewell 

When  I  embark ; 

For  tho'  from  out  our  bourne  of  Time  and  Place 

The  flood  may  bear  me  far, 
I  hope  to  see  my  Pilot  face  to  face 

When  I  have  crossed  the  bar. 


Whispers  of  heavenly  death  murmur'd  I  hear, 

Labial  gossip  of  night,  sibilant  chorals. 

Footsteps  gently  ascending,  mystical  breezes,  wafted 
soft  and  low, 

Ripples  of  unseen  rivers,  tides  of  a  current  flowing,  for- 
ever flowing, 

(Or  is  it  the  plashing  of  tears?  the  measureless  waters  of 
human  tears?) 

I  see,  just  see  skyward,  great  cloud-masses. 

Mournfully  slowly  they  roll,  silently  swelling  and  mixing. 

With  at  times  a  half-dimm'd  sadden'd  far-off' star. 

Appearing  and  disappearing. 

(Some  parturition  rather,  some  solemn  immortal  birth ; 

On  the  frontiers  to  eyes  impenetrable, 

Some  soul  is  passing  over.) 


202  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Browning's  lines  are  beaten  out  with  a  superb 
vigour,  but  in  substance  they  express  only  the 
crude  individualism  of  a  man  who  sees  nothing 
beyond  his  personal  emotions,  who  will  contend 
for  these  face  to  face  with  the  Arch  Fear,  that 
great  contemner  of  persons,  and  thinks  to  carry 
them  into  the  silence  of  the  grave.  Tennyson, 
the  poet  of  universal  law,  has  caught  up  into  one 
luminous  throbbing  image  the  merging  of  the 
soul  into  the  great  tides  of  being  from  whence  it 
sprung,  while  still  the  idea  of  personahty  is  not 
entirely  lost,  but  changed  into  a  kind  of  mystic 
symbol.  It  is  notable  that  Whitman,  who  posed 
before  the  world  as  the  upholder  of  rank  egotism, 
shows  less  of  this  quality  in  the  presence  of  death 
than  either  of  his  great  contemporaries.  Here  all 
thought  of  self  is  lost  in  a  vague  rapport,  as  he 
would  say,  with  the  dim  suggestions  of  whisper- 
ing, cloud- wrapped  night;  here  is  a  perception  of 
spiritual  values  far  above  the  anthropomorphism 
of  Browning,  and  a  power  of  evoking  a  poetical 
mood,  when  once  we  have  trained  our  ear  to  bring 
out  his  rhythms,  as  strong,  though  not  as  per- 
manent, as  Tennyson's.  In  this  note  of  almost 
pantheistic  revery,  the  lines  may  represent  a 
departure  from  Whitman's  earlier  manner,  but  in 
another  respect  they  exhibit  the  most  constant 
and  characteristic  of  his  qualities — the  sense  of 
ceaseless  indistinct  motion,  intimated  in  the 
sound  of  ascending  footsteps  and  of  the  unseen 
flowing    rivers,  expressed  more  directly  in  the 


WALT    WHITMAN  203 

shifting    clouds    and    the  far  oflf  appearing   and 
disappearing  star. 

And  this  sense  of  indiscriminate  motion  is,  I 
think,  the  impression  left  finall}^  by  Whitman's 
work  as  a  whole, — not  the  impression  of  wind- 
tossed  inanities  that  is  left  by  Swinburne,  but  of 
realities,  solid  and  momentous,  and  filled  with 
blind  portents  for  the  soul.  Now  the  observer 
seems  to  be  moving  through  clustered  objects 
beheld  vividly  for  a  second  of  time  and  then  lost 
in  the  mass,  and,  again,  the  observer  himself  is 
stationary  while  the  visions  throng  past  him  in 
almost  dizzy  rapidity;  but  in  either  case  we  come 
away  with  the  feeling  of  having  been  merged  in 
unbroken  processions,  whose  beginning  and  end 
are  below  the  distant  horizon,  and  whose  meaning 
we  but  faintly  surmise: 

All  is  a  procession, 

The  universe  is  a  procession  with  measured  and  perfect 
motion. 

The  explanation  of  this  effect  is  in  part  simple. 
The  aspect  of  nature  never  forgotten  by  Whitman 
in  town  or  field  is  the  sea,  and  always  the  sea  in 
motion.  He  is  on  the  beach  listening  "As  the  old 
mother  sways  her  to  and  fro  singing  her  husky 
song,"  and  looking  out  upon  the  "troops  of  wliite- 
maned  racers  racing  to  the  goal."  The  endless 
rush  of  the  ferries  is  in  the  substance  of  his  verse 
as  it  formed  a  part  of  his  life,  and  the  quick  pulsa- 
tions of  Broadway  are  equally  there : 


204  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Thou  of  the  endless  sliding,  mincing,  shuffling  feet! 
Thou,  like  the  parti-coloured  world  itself— like   infinite 

teeming,  mocking  life ! 
Thou  visor'd,  vast,  unspeakable  show  and  lesson! 

And  the  world  itself  is  an  Open  Road, — "the  long 
brown  path  before  me,"  he  calls  it,  "  leading 
wherever  I  choose."  Only  as  adding  to  the  free- 
dom and  spaciousness  of  this  sliding  panorama  can 
the  "cataloguing"  portions  of  Whitman's  book 
find  any  justification. 

From  these  material  images  it  is  an  easy 
transition  to  the  vision  "Of  the  progress  of  the 
souls  of  men  and  women  along  the  grand  roads 
of  the  universe."  Out  of  the  infinite  past  he 
beholds  himself  climbing,  as  it  were,  up  the  long 
gradations  of  time: 

Rise  after  rise  bow  the  phantoms  behind  me, 

Afar  down  I  see  the  huge  first  Nothing,  I  know  I  was 

even  there, 
I  waited  unseen   and  always,  and   slept    through    the 

lethargic  mist, 
And  took  my  time,  and   took  no   hurt  from  the    fetid 

carbon.     .     .     . 

Cycles  ferried  my  cradle,  rowing  and  rowing  like  cheerful 

boatmen, 
For  room  to  me  stars  kept  aside  in  their  own  rings. 
They  sent  influences  to  look  after  what  was  to  hold  me. 

And  in  the  future,  the  soul,  like  Columbus  dream- 
ing of  ever  new  worlds,  perceives  for  itself  other 
unending  voyages : 


WALT    WHITMAN  205 

As  if  some  miracle,  some  hand  divine  unseal'd  my  eyes, 
Shadowy  vast  shapes  smile  through  the  air  and  sky. 
And  on  the  distant  waves  sail  countless  ships. 
And  anthems  in  new  tongues  I  hear  saluting  me. 

It  was  the  same  symbolism  in  the  Passage  to 
India  ("Passage  to  more  than  India!  "  as  the 
refrain  becomes)  which  led  Whitman  to  speak  of 
that  poem  to  Mr.  Traubel  as  containing,  in  the 
jargon  of  Mickle  Street,  "  the  essential  ultimate 
me"  and  "  the  unfolding  of  cosmic  purposes." 

To  most  men,  when  their  eyes  within  are 
opened,  that  spectacle  brings  a  feeling  of  painful 
doubt.  The  mere  physical  perception  of  in- 
numerable multitudes  jostling  forward  with  no 
apparent  goal,  contains  an  element  of  intellectual 
bewilderment  for  the  observer.  His  own  iden- 
tity is  suddenly  threatened,  and  the  meaning  of 
his  existence  becomes  as  obscure  to  him  as  that  of 
the  alien  individualities  that  crowd  his  path. 
And  when  this  spectacle,  as  it  does  with  some 
men,  passes  into  an  intuition  of  vast  shadowy 
fluctuations  in  the  invisible  world,  the  bewilder- 
ment grows  to  a  sense  of  terror,  even  of  despair. 
It  is  the  tonic  quality  of  Whitman — the  quality 
for  which  his  sane  readers  return  to  him  again 
and  again — that  his  e5'es  were  opened  to  this 
vision,  and  that  he  remained  unafraid.  All  the 
vociferousness  of  his  earlier  poems  is  little  more 
than  a  note  of  defiance  against  the  thronging 
shapes  that  beset  him.  But  I  think  it  was  some- 
thing more  than  his  obstreperous  individualism 


206  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

that  saved  him  in  the  end.  Look  into  his  face, 
especially  in  the  noble  war-time  picture  of  him 
called  the  Hugo  portrait,  and  you  will  be  struck 
by  that  veiled  brooding  regard  of  the  eyes  which 
goes  with  the  vision  of  the  seer.  He  felt  not  only 
his  personal  identity  entrenched  behind  walls  of 
inexpugnable  egotism,  but  he  was  conscious,  also, 
of  another  kind  of  identity,  which  made  him  one 
with  every  living  creature,  even  with  the  inani- 
mate elements.  He  was  no  stranger  in  the  uni- 
verse. The  spirit  that  gazed  out  of  his  own  eyes 
into  the  unresting  multitude  looked  back  at  him 
with  silent  greeting  from  every  passing  face.  And 
it  was  chiefly  through  this  higher  identity,  or 
sympathy,  that  he  cast  away  fear.  He  chants  its 
power  in  a  hundred  different  ways — now  crudely 
pronouncing  himself  this  person  and  that,  and 
again  merely  declaring  that  all  persons  are  the 
same  and  equally  good  to  him,  now  denying  all 
distinctions  whatsoever.  He  gave  it  a  mystical 
name: 

Through  me  the  afflatus  surging  and  surging,  through 

me  the  current  and  index. 
I  speak  the  pass-word  primeval;  I   give  the  sign  of 

democracy. 

The  word  has  been  caught  up  by  certain  of  his 
disciples  and  made  the  pass-word  for  admission 
into  Whitman  clubs  and  the  key  to  unlock  the 
society  of  the  future.  As  the  poet  of  democracy 
he  is  supposed  to  have  relegated  all  preceding 


WALT    WHITMAN  207 

literatures  and  religions  to  the  dust  heap,  and  to 
have  inaugurated  a  new  era  of  civilisation.  Now, 
undoubtedly  he  did  represent  in  a  way  the  politi- 
cal and  physical  aspects  of  America  before  the 
war — its  large  fluctuations  of  population,  its  sense 
of  unfulfilled  destiny.  But  for  the  problems  con- 
fronting the  actual  militant  democracy  I  cannot 
see  that  his  poems  have  any  answer.  "  Salvation 
can't  be  legislated  "  was  the  phrase  with  w^hich  he 
warned  oS"  the  labour  agitators  and  heralds  of 
reform  who  sought  his  assistance  in  the  later 
years.  I  fear  that  the  working-man  to-daj-  who 
should  undertake  to  follow  his  doctrine  of  insou- 
ciance would  soon  learn  that  loafing  may  be  some- 
thing very  different  from  an  invitation  to  the  soul. 
There  may  be  inspiration  for  the  self-reliant 
individual  in  Whitman,  but  even  more  than 
Emerson's  his  philosophy  is  one  of  fraternal 
anarchy,  leaving  no  room  for  the  stricter  ties  of 
marriage  or  the  state.  It  is  curious  that  through- 
out his  works  you  will  find  scarcely  an  intimation 
of  the  more  exclusive  forms  of  love  or  friendship 
which  furnish  the  ordinary  theme  of  poetry.  In 
that  universe  of  unresting  motion  into  which  he 
gazed  he  could  discover  neither  time  nor  place  for 
the  knitting  of  those  more  enduring  unions. 
Camarado !  was  his  word,  the  cry  from  one  man 
to  another  as  they  meet  in  the  streaming  pro- 
cession, walk  together  for  a  little  way  with 
clasped  hands,  and  then  with  the  kiss  of  parting 
separate,  each  to  his  own  end.     This,   and  no 


208  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

political  programme,  is,  as  I  understand  it,  the 
meaning  of  the  pass-word  primeval,  democracy. 

Only  with  Whitman's  experience  of  the  war, 
and  his  daily  familiarity  with  death,  do  we  catch 
the  first  note  of  that  deeper  mysticism  which  looks 
through  the  illusion  of  change  into  the  silence  of 
infinite  calm.  I  have  been  struck  by  the  fact  that 
it  was  the  battle-fieldsof  Virginiathatfirst  revealed 
to  him  the  stars  and  their  infinite  contrast  with 
this  life  of  ours.  He  is  describing  ' '  these  butchers' 
shambles"  in  his  Specimen  Days,  when  suddenly 
he  seems  to  have  become  aware  of  the  full  glory 
of  the  sky :  ' '  Such  is  the  camp  of  the  wounded — 
such  a  fragment,  a  reflection  afar  off  of  the  bloody 
scene — while  all  over  the  clear,  large  moon  comes 
out  at  times  softly,  quietly  shining.  Amid  the 
woods,  that  scene  of  flitting  souls — amid  the  crack 
and  crash  and  yelling  sounds — the  impalpable 
perfume  of  the  woods — and  yet  the  pungent, 
stifling  smoke — the  radiance  of  the  moon,  looking 
from  heaven  at  intervals  so  placid — the  sky  so 
heavenly — the  clear-obscure  up  there,  those  buoy- 
ant upper  oceans — a  few  large  placid  stars  beyond, 
coming  silently  and  languidly  out,  and  then 
disappearing — the  melancholy,  draperied  night 
above,  around." — It  was  out  of  such  material  as 
this,  written  hastily  in  little  pocket  note-books, 
that  the  Drum-  Taps  were  later  constructed.  One 
of  the  poems,  the  earliest  in  which  this  pathetic 
fallacy  of  the  sky  appears,  connects  Whitman  with 
Homer: 


WALT    WHITMAN  2O9 

I  see  before  me  now  a  travelling  army  halting, 

Below  a  fertile  valley  spread,  with  barns  and  the  orchards 
of  summer, 

Behind,  the  terraced  sides  of  a  mountain,  abrupt,  in 
places  rising  high, 

Broken,  with  rocks,  with  clinging  cedars,  with  tall  shapes 
dingily  seen, 

The  numerous  camp-fires  scatter'd  near  and  far,  some 
away  up  on  the  mountain. 

The  shadowy  forms  of  men  and  horses,  looming,  large- 
sized,  flickering. 

And  over  all  the  sky — the  sky!  far,  far  out  of  reach, 
studded,  breaking  out,  the  eternal  stars. 

It  is  a  picture,  roughly-limned,  yet  comparable  in 
its  own  way  with  that  scene  in  the  Iliad  which 
Tennyson  has  translated  so  magnificently: 

And  these  all  night  upon  the  bridge  of  war 
Sat  glorying;  many  a  fire  before  them  blazed: 
As  when  in  heaven  the  stars  about  the  moon 
Look  beautiful,  when  all  the  winds  are  laid, 
And  every  height  comes  out,  and  jutting  peak 
And  valley,  and  the  immeasurable  heavens 
Break  open  to  their  highest,  and  all  the  stars 
Shine. 

Almost,  in  such  passages  as  these,  it  would  seem 
as  if  the  familiarity  with  death  had  drawn  for 
Whitman  the  last  curtain  of  initiation;  almost  he 
stands  like  Emerson's  young  mortal  in  the  hall 
of  the  firmament, — "On  the  instant,  and  inces- 
santly, fall  snow-storms  of  illusions.  He  fancies 
himself  in  a  vast  crowd  which  sways  this  way  and 
that  .  .  .  Every  moment,  new  changes,  and 
new  showers  of  deceptions,  to  baffle  and  distract 


2IO  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

him.  And  when,  by  and  by,  for  an  instant,  the 
air  clears,  and  the  cloud  lifts  a  little,  there  are  the 
gods  still  sitting  around  him  on  their  thrones, — 
they  alone  with  him  alone."  To  that  diviner 
glimpse  Whitman  never  quite  attained,  and  this 
is  well,  for  in  attaining  it  he  would  have  passed 
beyond  the  peculiar  inspiration  which  makes  him 
what  he  is.  He  had  been  haunted  by  the  idea  of 
death  as  a  boy,  and  had  associated  it  with  the 
breaking  of  the  sea-waves  on  the  beach.  It  was 
the  supreme  symbol  of  change,  beautiful  and 
beneficent,  purging  and  renewing,  yet  still  a 
gateway  into  new  roads,  and  never  a  door  open- 
ing into  the  chambers  of  home.  Such  a  charac- 
ter it  retains,  indeed,  in  the  later  poems,  but  its 
ministration  strikes  nearer  the  heart  of  things: 

Word  over  all,  beautiful  as  the  sky, 

Beautiful  that  war  and  all  its  carnage  must  in  time  be 

utterly  lost, 
That  the  hands  of  the  sisters  Death  and  Night  incessantly 

softly  wash  again,  and  ever  again,  this  soil'd  world: 
For  my  enemy  is  dead,  a  man  divine  as  myself  is  dead, 
I  look  where  he  lies  white-faced  and  still  in  the  coffin — I 

draw  near, 
Bend  down  and  touch  lightly  with  my  lips  the  white  face 

in  the  coffin. 

Kven  in  his  chant,  lVhe7i  Lilacs  Last  in  the  Door- 
yard  Bloom'  d,  it  is  notable  that  he  instinctively 
chooses  for  his  picture  the  dead  President  on  that 
long  westward  journey,  with  the  crowds  throng- 
ing to  behold  the  passing  train.  He  is  still 
haunted  by  the  thought  of  endless  progress  and 


WALT    WHITMAN  211 

procession,  although  in  the  same  poem  is  to  occur 
that  wonderful  hymn  to  the  Deliverer : 

Come  lovely  and  soothing  death, 

Undulate  round  the  world,  serenely  arriving,  arriving, 

In  the  day,  in  the  night,  to  all,  to  each, 

Sooner  or  later  delicate  death. 

Prais'd  be  the  fathomless  universe, 

For  life  and  joy,  and  for  objects  and  knowledge  curious, 

And  for  love,  sweet  love — but  praise !  praise !  praise  ! 

For  the  sure-en  winding  arms  of  cool-enfolding  death. 

Dark  mother  always  gliding  near  with  soft  feet. 

Have  none  chanted  for  thee  a  chant  of  fullest  welcome? 

Then  I  chant  it  for  thee,  I  glorify  thee  above  all. 

He  lacked  the  rare  and  unique  elevation  of 
Emerson  from  whom  so  much  of  his  vision  was 
unwittingly  derived,  but  as  a  compensation  his 
temperament  is  richer  than  the  New  England 
poet's,  and  his  verbal  felicity  at  its  best  more 
striking.  I  do  not  see  why  Americans  should 
hesitate  to  accept  him,  with  all  his  imperfections 
and  incompleteness,  and  with  all  his  vaunted 
pedantry  of  the  pavement,  as  one  of  the  most 
original  and  characterisic  of  their  poets;  but  to  do 
this  they  must  begin  by  forgetting  his  disciples. 


WILLIAM  BLAKE 

After  all  the  editorial  care  bestowed  on  Blake 
it  seems  incredible  that  we  should  have  had  to 
wait  until  this  late  day  for  an  authentic  text '  of 
his  poems  ;  yet  such  is  the  fact.  Some  of  the 
emendations  of  the  earlier  editors  were  pardonable 
in  a  way,  and  if  these  gentlemen  had  been  satis- 
fied with  correcting  obvious  slips  of  grammar 
where  the  sense  or  rhythm  was  not  involved,  I  for 
one  should  be  slow  to  censure.  But  they  have 
gone  far  beyond  that.  Take,  for  example,  one 
of  the  most  characteristic  and  perfect  of  Blake's 
epigrams : 

Mock  on,  Mock  on,  Voltaire,  Rousseau ; 
Mock  on,  Mock  on  ;  't  is  all  in  vain! 
You  throw  the  sand  against  the  wind, 
And  the  wind  blows  it  back  again. 
And  every  sand  becomes  a  Gem 
Reflected  in  the  beams  divine ; 
Blown  back  they  blind  the  mocking  eye, 
But  still  in  Israel's  paths  they  shine. 

'  The  Poetical  Works  of  William  Blake.  A  new  and 
verbatim  text  from  the  manuscript,  engraved  and  letter- 
press originals.  With  variorum  readings  and  biblio- 
graphical notes  and  prefaces.  By  John  Sampson.  New 
York :  Oxford  University  Press,  1905. — The  text  is  also 
published  in  a  smaller  volume,  without  the  notes,  and 
•with  an  introduction  by  Walter  Raleigh. 
212 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  213 

Can  any  one  explain  by  what  right  Mr.  W.  B. 
Yeats  should  have  changed  the  first  "sand  "  to 
"dust"  and  the  second  to  "stone"?  From  all 
these  impertinences,  and  they  are  pretty  numer- 
ous, Mr.  John  Sampson  has  delivered  us  by  print- 
ing the  text  as  it  left  Blake's  hands.  In  some 
cases  the  fulness  of  his  notes  almost  gives  us  the 
advantage  of  having  the  poet's  actual  manuscript 
under  our  eyes.  A  notable  instance  of  this  is 
furnished  by  the  best-known  of  the  poems,  "The 
Tiger,"  which  has  been  printed  with  so  many 
arbitrary  variations  that  I  need  make  no  apology 
for  quoting  it  here  in  its  entirety,  just  as  Blake 
meant  it  to  be  : 

Tyger !  Tyger !  burning  bright 
In  the  forests  of  the  night, 
What  immortal  hand  or  eye 
Could  frame  thy  fearful  symmetry? 

In  what  distant  deeps  or  skies 
Burnt  the  fire  of  thine  eyes? 
On  what  wings  dare  he  aspire? 
What  the  hand  dare  sieze  the  fire? 

And  what  shoulder,  &  what  art. 
Could  twist  the  sinews  of  thy  heart? 
And  when  thy  heart  began  to  beat. 
What  dread  hand  ?  &  what  dread  feet? 

What  the  hammer?  what  the  chain? 
In  what  furnace  was  thy  brain  ? 
What  the  anvil?  what  dread  grasp 
Dare  its  deadly  terrors  clasp  ? 


214  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

When  the  stars  threw  down  their  spears, 
And  water'd  heaven  with  their  tears, 
Did  he  smile  his  work  to  see? 
Did  he  who  made  the  Lamb  make  thee? 

Tyger!  Tyger!  burning  bright 
In  the  forests  of  the  night, 
What  immortal  hand  or  eye, 
Dare  frame  thy  fearful  symmetry? 

Mr.  Sampson  is  justified  in  pointing  here  to  "the 
terrible  compressed  force ' '  of  the  two  abrupt 
sentences  in  the  line  "What  dread  hand  ?  &  what 
dread  feet?"  and  in  comparing  it  with  the  languid 
punctuation  of  the  Aldine  text,  "What  dread 
hand  and  what  dread  feet  ?  "  He  does  good  service 
also  in  showing  that  no  manuscript  authority 
exists  for  what  Swinburne  perversely  calls  a 
"nobler  reading": 

What  dread  hand  framed  thy  dread  feet? 
The  genesis  of  the  correct  form  is  not  without 
interest  as  throwing  light  on  Blake's  mental  pro- 
cesses— if  it  be  not  merely  an  illustration  of  the 
common  truth  of  poets,  inspirantur  eundo.  In 
Blake's  MS.  book  this  part  of  the  poem  originally 
stood  as  follows: 

And  when  thy  heart  began  to  beat 
What  dread  hand  &  and  what  dread  feet 
Could  fetch  it  from  the  furnace  deep 
And  in  thy  horrid  ribs  dare  steep 
In  the  well  of  sanguine  woe 
In  what  clay  &  in  what  mould 
Were  thy  eyes  of  fury  roll'd 
What  the  hammer    .     .     . 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  215 

When  he  came  to  publish  the  poem  in  his  Songs 
of  Experience  he  first  cancelled  this  weak  five- line 
stanza;  and  then,  seeing  that  the  last  line  of  the 
preceding  stanza  was  left  suspended  without  a 
predicate,  he  waived  the  diflSculty  by  simply 
punctuating  so  as  to  make  two  abrupt  questions, 
"What  dread  hand  ?  &  what  dread  feet  ?" — surely 
a  lucky  stroke  which  his  editors  need  not  have 
been  at  such  pains  to  undo. 

And  even  the  frequent  lapses  of  grammar  and 
rhythm,  whose  correction,  one  must  confess,  does 
render  the  earlier  editions  pleasanter  to  read  than 
Mr.  Sampson's  scrupulous  fidelity,  have  a  meaning 
for  anyone  who  desires  to  understand  the  workings 
of  Blake's  mind.  The  fact  is  that  a  well-disci- 
plined or  genteel  Blake  is  inconceivable.  "People 
are  in  general  what  they  are  made,  by  education 
and  company,  from  fifteen  to  five  and  twenty," 
said  Lord  Chesterfield,  whose  Letters  were  pub- 
lished just  when  Blake  was  entering  on  those 
critical  years.  And  Blake  was  to  be  a  voice  cry- 
ing in  solitary  places  against  everything  which 
that  cultured  Earl  represented,  against  the  estab- 
lished education  and  society  of  the  times.  That 
was  an  age  sufficiently  easy  to  comprehend, 
because  it  had  formed  for  itself  so  clear  an  ideal. 
Its  aim  above  all  was  to  avoid  immediate  contact 
with  realities,  to  interpose  some  layer  of  philoso- 
phic experience  between  a  man's  soul  and  the 
emotional  shocks  of  life.  There  was  feeling 
enough,  as  the  tearful  annals  of  the  "females" 


2l6  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

may  prove,  and  there  was,  too,  no  lack  of  effi- 
ciency, as  Chesterfield's  own  motto,  Siiaviter  in 
modo,  fortiter  in  re,  may  indicate  ;  but  both  the 
heart  and  the  will  were  trained  to  act  through 
the  mediation  of  approved  formulae.  Probablj^  the 
interest  of  most  readers  to-daj',  though  wrongly 
in  my  opinion,  is  not  so  much  with  this  main 
edifice  of  the  age  as  with  the  scattered  and  blindly 
working  forces  that  were  sapping  the  very  founda- 
tions of  the  structure.  At  every  turn  one  comes 
upon  traces  of  these  subterranean  currents. 
Against  the  official  virtue  of  the  Church  and  the 
polite  horror  of  enthusiasm  Wesley  was  preaching 
the  immediate  dependency  of  the  soul  on  God. 
It  was  he  who  said  of  "the  favourite  of  the  age," 
Lord  Chesterfield,  "his  name  will  stink  to  all 
generations" — as  to  our  day,  at  least,  it  certainly 
does.  And  another  rebel,  to  whom  in  marvellous 
guise  the  visible  and  invisible  (to  him  strangely 
visible)  worlds  were  commingled,  Blake  as  a  boy 
may  have  passed  in  London  streets  and  with  his 
precocious  insight  recognised  as  a  brother — "a 
placid,  venerable,  thin  man  of  eighty-four,  of 
erect  figure  and  abstracted  air,  wearing  a  full- 
bottomed  wig,  a  pair  of  long  ruffles,  and  a  curious- 
hilted  sword,  and  carrjang  a  gold-headed  cane — 
no  vision,  still  flesh  and  blood,  but  himself  the 
greatest  of  modern  Vision  Seers — Emanuel  Swe- 
denborg  by  name,  who  came  from  Amsterdam  to 
London  in  August,  1771."  Much  in  later  5'ears 
Blake  was  to  learu  of  the  New  Jerusalem  from 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  21  7 

this  man's  books,  and  much  of  his  doctrine  he 
was  to  reject.  And  in  literature  a  number  of 
men  just  at  this  time  were  undertaking  to  deny 
the  validity  of  experience  and  seeking  for  poetry 
in  the  childhood  of  the  race.  In  1760  Macpherson 
began  to  publish  his  pseudo-translations  from  the 
Gaelic;  in  1765  Percy  brought  out  his  first  Rel- 
iqucs  of  Ancient  English  Poetry;  and  a  year  or 
two  later  a  poor  boy  of  Bristol — a  child  almost — 
might  be  seen  Ijnng  on  the  sward  before  the 
Church  of  St.  Mary  Redcliflfe,  dreaming  his 
monkish  rhymes  of  the  fifteenth  century.  We 
must  not  forget  that  notable  scholars  of  the  day 
were  to  wage  battle  for  the  authenticity  of  these 
Rowley  poems,  and  that  at  least  one  dignitary  of 
the  Church  was  to  rank  them  in  excellence  above 
Homer,  Shakespeare,  and  Milton. 

Cynical  men  of  the  world,  such  as  Horace 
Walpole,  and  masters  of  traditional  learning,  such 
as  Thomas  Gray,  felt  the  influence  of  these 
subterranean  streams  and  showed  it  in  their 
works,  but  only  a  genius  entirely  innocent  of  the 
schools  and  of  the  world,  I  think,  could  have  been 
so  acutely  sensitive  to  all  these  vaguely  compre- 
hended forces;  only  such  an  one  could  have  sur- 
rendered himself  to  be  for  them  a  spokesman  so 
single-minded  in  purpose  as  to  have  seemed  to  his 
own  generation,  if  indeed  not  to  ours  also,  a 
babbler  and  a  maniac.  William  Blake  was  born 
in  London  in  1757.  His  father  (our  Celtic  friends 
will  have  him,  like  all  fathers  of  genius,  of  Irish 


2l8  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

extraction)  was  a  hosier  in  a  small  way  who  lived 
over  his  shop  in  Broad  Street.  William,  the 
second  child  in  a  family  of  five,  seems  to  have 
gone  without  any  regular  education.  We  hear  of 
his  wandering  much  in  the  suburbs  and  of  the 
strange  visions  that  haunted  his  boyhood.  One 
day,  sauntering  on  Peckham  Rye  he  beholds  a 
tree  filled  with  angels,  whose  wings  gleam  among 
the  leaves  like  stars;  and  on  relating  the  incident 
at  home  he  just  escapes  a  thrashing  from  his 
father  for  telling  a  lie.  At  the  age  of  ten  he  was 
put  to  the  drawing  school  of  Mr.  Pars  in  the 
Strand.  Four  years  later  he  was  apprenticed  to 
learn  the  trade  of  engraving.  His  father  planned 
first  to  place  him  under  Ryland,  an  artist  of  some 
reputation,  but  the  boy  objected.  "Father,"  said 
he,  as  they  left  Ryland' s  studio,  "I  do  not  like 
the  man's  face  ;  it  looks  as  if  he  will  live  to  be 
hanged!"  And  in  due  time  that  uncanny  pro- 
phecy was  fulfilled.  In  deference,  therefore,  to  the 
boy's  wishes  he  was  apprenticed  to  the  engraver 
James  Basire,  under  whom  he  worked  diligently 
and  successfully.  After  a  little  while  he  was  sent 
out  to  make  drawings  of  the  monuments  and 
buildings  which  Basire  was  engaged  to  engrave 
for  Gough,  the  antiquary  of  whom  Walpole 
has  so  much  to  say.  Much  of  this  time  he 
passed  in  Westminster  Abbey,  locked  up  by  the 
verger  alone  with  the  solemn  memorials  of 
the  dead — yet  not  alone,  for  in  that  silence  of  the 
tombs  intimate  visitations  came  to  him  of  Christ 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  219 

and  the  apostles,  and  taught  him  the  secrets  of 
the  spiritual  world. 

In  1782  he  married  Catherine  Sophia  Boucher,  a 
pretty  brunette,  who  served  him  to  the  end  as  few 
men  of  genius  have  ever  been  served.  Crabb 
Robinson,  the  ubiquitous,  called  on  her  after  the 
poet's  death  and  found  her,  notwithstanding  her 
poor  and  dingy  dress,  a  woman  with  a  good 
expression  on  her  countenance  and  a  dark  eye, 
showing  the  remains  of  youthful  beauty.  She 
had,  he  says,  the  wifely  virtue  of  virtues — an 
implicit  reverence  for  her  husband.  She  believed 
in  his  visions  as  absolutely  as  Blake  did  himself, 
and  once  remarked  to  him,  in  Robinson's  pre- 
sence: "You  know,  dear,  the  first  time  you  saw 
God  was  when  you  were  four  years  old,  and  he 
put  his  head  to  the  window  and  set  you  a-scream- 
ing."  Certainly  Blake  needed  such  a  helpmate, 
for  his  life  henceforth  was  to  be  one  of  continual 
toil  and  small  remuneration.  For  years  he  prac- 
tically depended  for  support  on  a  certain  Mr. 
Butts  who  bought  his  plates  at  the  price  of  a 
guinea  each. 

One  episode  stands  out  from  the  dull  monotony 
of  his  career.  In  the  year  1800,  the  busy  and 
versatile  Hayley — then  residing  not  at  romantic 
Eartham  where  Cowper  and  Mrs.  Unwin  had 
sought  peace,'  but  in  a  marine  cottage  at  Felpham, 

'Alas  for  these  hopes!  July  29,  1792,  Cowper  is  writ- 
ing to  Hayley:  "I  am  hunted  by  spiritual  hounds  in  the 
night  season.     I  cannot  help  it.    You  will  pity  me,  and 


2  20  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

some  six  miles  away — asked  Blake  to  engrave  the 
illustrations  for  the  life  of  Cowper  which  he  had 
undertaken  to  write.  Blake  accepted  the  invita- 
tion, and  for  three  years  he  and  his  wife  dwelt  in 
a  little  cottage  near  by,  on  the  Sussex  Downs, 
Here,  for  awhile,  he  was  buoyantly  happy. 
"Felpham  is  a  sweet  place  for  study,"  he  writes 
to  his  friend  Flaxman  "  because  it  is  more  spirit- 
ual than  London.  Heaven  opens  here  on  all 
sides  her  golden  gates:  her  windows  are  not 
obstructed  by  vapors  ;  voices  of  celestial  inhabi- 
tants are  more  distinctly  heard,  and  their  forms 
more  distinctly  seen;  and  my  cottage  is  also  a 
shadow  of  their  houses."  In  this  disposition  of 
content  it  was  small  matter  to  him  that  he  was 
poor  and  that  the  true  work  of  his  imagination 
was  scoffed  at  by  the  world.  "Now  begins  a  new 
life,"  he  says  in  the  same  letter,  "because  another 
covering  of  earth  is  shaken  oflf.  I  am  more  famed 
in  Heaven  for  my  works  than  I  could  well  con- 
ceive.    In   my   brain   are  studies  and  chambers 


wish  it  wete  otherwise ;  and  though  you  may  think  there 
is  much  of  the  imaginary  in  it,  will  not  deem  it  for  that 
reason  an  evil  less  to  be  lamented.  So  much  for  fears 
and  distresses.  Soon  I  hope  they  shall  all  have  a  joyful 
termination,  and  I,  my  Mary,  my  Johnny,  and  my  dog, 
be  skipping  with  delight  at  Eartham." — In  less  than  two 
months  he  is  writing  from  this  earthly  Paradise  to  Lady 
Hesketh  :  "  This  is,  as  I  have  already  told  you,  a  delight- 
ful place  ;  more  beautiful  scenery  I  have  never  beheld  or 
expect  to  behold ;  but  the  charms  of  it,  uncommon  as 


I    WILLIAM    BLAKE  221 

filled  with  books  and  pictures  of  old,  which  I 
wrote  and  painted  in  ages  of  eternity  before  my 
mortal  life;  and  those  works  are  the  delight  and 
study  of  archangels.  Why,  then,  should  I  be 
anxious  about  the  riches  or  fame  of  mortality  ? ' ' 
Many  a  visitation  of  poet  and  saint,  "majestic 
shadows,  grey  but  luminous,"  descended  upon 
him  as  he  paced  his  tiny  garden  or  looked  out  over 
the  glory  of  the  sea  ;  many  a  gleam  of  radiant 
fancy  lightened  his  labours.  "Did  you  ever  see 
a  fairy's  funeral,  madam  ?  "  he  once  asked  a  lady 
who  happened  to  sit  by  him  at  a  company  during 
these  days.  * '  I  have,  but  not  before  last  night. 
I  was  walking  alone  in  my  garden;  there  was 
great  stillness  among  the  branches  and  flowers 
and  more  than  common  sweetness  in  the  air ;  I 
heard  a  low  and  pleasant  sound,  and  I  knew  not 
whence  it  came.  At  last,  I  saw  the  broad  leaf  of 
a  flower  move,  and  underneath  I  saw  a  procession 
of  creatures,  of  the  size  and  colour  of  green  and 
grey  grasshoppers,  bearing  a  body  laid  out  on  a 
rose-leaf,  which  they  buried  with  songs,  and  then 

they  are,  have  not  in  the  least  alienated  my  affections 
from  Weston.  The  genius  of  that  place  suits  me  better, — 
it  has  an  air  of  snug  concealment,  in  which  a  disposition 
like  mine  feels  itself  peculiarly  gratified  ;  whereas  here 
I  see  from  every  window  woods  like  forests,  and  hills  like 
mountains, — a  wilderness,  in  short,  that  rather  increases 
my  natural  melancholy,  and  which,  were  it  not  for  the 
agreeables  I  find  within,  would  soon  convince  me  that 
mere  change  of  place  can  avail  me  little," 


222  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

disappeared.  It  was  a  fairy  funeral  !  "  But  this 
state  of  contentment  could  not  endure.  The  tasks 
set  him  by  so  inconsequent  and  commonplace  a 
creature  as  Hayley  lay  like  lead  on  his  spirit. 
And  at  bottom  he  was  not  in  sympathy  with  the 
country.  In  his  letters,  one  begins  to  get 
glimpses  of  a  seething  turmoil  within  his  breast. 
"  Temptations  are  on  the  right  hand  and  on  the 
left,"  he  cries  out.  "Behind,  the  sea  of  time  and 
space  roars  and  follows  swiftly.  He  who  keeps 
not  right  onwards  is  lost  ;  and  if  our  footsteps 
slide  in  clay,  how  can  we  do  otherwise  than  fear 
and  tremble!  "  And  later,  to  the  same  friend: 
"  But,  alas!  now  I  may  say  to  you — what  perhaps 
I  should  not  dare  to  say  to  anyone  else — that  I  can 
alone  carry  on  my  visionary  studies  in  London 
unannoj'^ed,  and  that  I  may  converse  with  my 
friends  in  Eternity,  vSee  visions,  dream  dreams, 
and  prophesy  and  speak  parables,  unobserved, 
and  at  liberty  from  the  doubts  of  other  mortals. ' ' 
He  was  not  the  first  to  find  in  the  crowded  life  of 
a  great  city  a  solitude  deeper  than  that  of  the 
remote  village  or  the  deserted  field.  We  will  not 
follow  him  to  his  new  London  homes,  nor  recall 
the  clouds  of  care  and  poverty  that  drew  about 
him  until  his  death  in  1827.  It  will  be  sufficient 
to  quote  a  part  of  Crabb  Robinson's  graphic 
account  of  the  man  and  of  his  conversation : 

He  has  a  most  interesting  appearance.  He  is  now  old 
(sixty-eight),  pale,  with  a  Socratic  countenance  and  an 
expression  of  great  sweetness,  though  with  something  of 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  223 

languor  about  it  except  when  animated,  and  then  he  has 
about  him  an  air  of  inspiration.  The  conversation  turned 
on  art,  poetry,  and  religion.  .  .  .  He  spoke  of  his  paint- 
ings as  being  what  he  had  seen  in  his  visions.  And  when 
he  said  "  my  visions,"  it  was  in  the  ordinary  unemphatic 
tone  in  which  we  speak  of  every-day  matters.  In  the 
same  tone  he  said  repeatedly,  "The  Spirit  told  me."  I 
took  occasion  to  say :  "  You  express  yourself  as  Socrates 
used  to  do.  What  resemblance  do  you  suppose  there  is 
between  your  spirit  and  his?" — "The  same  as  between 
our  countenances,"  He  paused  and  added,  "I  was 
Socrates";  and  then,  as  if  correcting  himself,  said,  "a 
sort  of  brother.  I  must  have  had  conversations  with  him. 
So  I  had  with  Jesus  Christ.  I  have  an  obscure  recollec- 
tion of  having  been  with  both  of  them."  I  suggested,  on 
philosophical  grounds,  the  impossibility  of  supposing  an 
immortal  being  created,  an  eternity  ct.  parte  post  without 
an  eternity  d.  parte  ante.  His  eye  brightened  at  this,  and 
he  fully  concurred  with  me.  "To  be  sure,  it  is  impos- 
sible. We  are  all  coexistent  with  God,  members  of 
the  Divine  body.  We  are  all  partakers  of  the  Divine 
nature.  .  .  ."  He  professes  to  be  very  hostile  to  Plato, 
and  reproaches  Wordsworth  with  being  not  a  Christian* 
but  a  Platonist.  It  is  one  of  the  subtle  remarks  of  Hume, 
on  certain  religious  speculations,  that  the  tendency  of 
them  is  to  make  men  indiflferent  to  whatever  takes  place 
by  destroying  all  ideas  of  good  and  evil.  I  took  occasion 
to  apply  this  remark  to  something  Blake  had  said.  "  If 
so,"  I  said,  "  there  is  no  use  in  discipline  or  education, — 
no  diflfereuce  between  good  and  evil."  He  hastily  broke 
in  upon  me:  "There  is  no  use  in  education.  I  hold  it 
to  be  wrong.  It  is  the  great  sin.  It  is  eating  of  the  tree 
of  the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  This  was  the  fault 
of  Plato.  He  knew  of  nothing  but  the  virtues  and 
vices,  and  good  aud  evil.  There  is  nothing  in  all  that. 
Everything  is  good  in  God's  eyes.     .     .     ."     Of  himself. 


224  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

lie  said  he  acted  by  command.  The  Spirit  said  to  him, 
"Blake,  be  an  artist,  and  nothing  else."  In  this  there 
is  felicity.  His  eye  glistened  while  he  spoke  of  the  joy 
of  devoting  himself  solely  to  divine  art.  Art  is  inspira- 
tion. When  Michael  Angelo,  or  Raphael,  or  Mr.  Flax- 
man,  does  any  of  his  fine  things,  he  does  them  in  the 
Spirit.  Blake  said :  "  I  should  be  sorry  if  I  had  any 
earthly  fame,  for  whatever  natural  glory  a  man  has  is  so 
much  taken  from  his  spiritual  glory.  I  wish  to  do 
nothing  for  profit.  I  wish  to  live  for  art.  I  want 
nothing  whatever.     I  am  happy." 

It  is  well  for  Wm  that  he  believed  his  works  to 
be  famed  in  heaven,  for  on  earth  they  were  almost 
unknown.  His  poetry,  indeed,  can  scarcely  be 
said  to  have  been  published  at  all.  In  1783,  by 
the  help  of  a  few  friends,  a  slender  volume  of  his 
Poetical  Sketches,  consisting  of  only  thirty-eight 
leaves,  was  privately  issued  without  publisher's 
or  printer's  name,  and  with  this  modest  Advertise- 
ment: "The  following  Sketches  were  the  pro- 
duction of  untutored  youth,  commenced  in  his 
twelfth,  and  occasionally  resumed  by  the  author 
till  his  twentieth  year,"  etc.  His  other  books, 
beginning  with  the  Songs  of  Innocence  in  1789, 
were  produced  by  an  original  method  which  he 
called  "illuminated  printing."  By  a  process  of 
etching,  the  text  and  interwoven  illustrations 
were  left  raised  on  small  copper  plates,  and  from 
these  printed  by  the  author  on  sheets  of  paper 
which  he  bound  together  in  a  sheaf.  The 
illustrations  he  filled  in  with  flat  water-colours. 
A-n  edition  was  commonly  a  single  copy,  struck 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  225 

oflF  when  a  chance  customer  appeared.  Lucky 
the  man  to-day  who  owns  one  of  these  priceless 
books  ;  fortunate  if  he  can  so  much  as  handle  one 
of  them  and  see  with  his  own  eyes  the  mystical 
marriage  of  form  and  language.'  Lyrical  poetry 
we  have  always  defined  by  its  relation  to  music, 
but  here  we  must  accept  a  new  genre  and  take 
painting  instead  of  melody  as  ancillary  to  words. 
On  the  whole,  it  must  be  said  that  Blake  is 
greater,  at  least  more  complete,  as  an  artist  than 
as  a  poet ;  and  this,  I  think,  is  due  mainly  to  his 
superior  discipline  as  a  draftsman.  In  verse  he 
never  produced  anything  more  exquisite  than 
some  of  his  juvenile  songs;  in  drawing  he  grew  in 
power  to  the  end,  and  his  noblest  designs  are  the 
Illustrations  of  the  Book  of  Job,  engraved  by  him 
in  his  seventieth  year.  One  feels  the  conscious 
artist  in  such  work  as  this,  whereas  his  success 
with  words  seems  somehow  always  to  be  the 
result  of  accident. 

But  if  he  was  never  quite  certain  of  his  art 
as  a  poet,  he  was  at  all  events  fully  aware  of  his 
hostihty  to  the  reigning  school  of  the  day.  It 
is  nothing  less  than  miraculous  that  a 
cockney  lad  in  the  full  eighteenth  century 
should  have  written  such  stanzas  as  these 
To  the  Muses: 


'  This  pleasure  I  myself  owe  to  the  liberality  of  Mr. 
Robert  Hoe,  whose  superb  library  contains  several  of 
the  origfinal  Blakes. 


226  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Whether  on  Ida's  shady  brow, 
Or  in  the  chambers  of  the  East, 
The  chambers  of  the  sun,  that  now 
From  antient  melody  have  ceas'd  ; 

Whether  in  Heav'n  ye  wander  fair. 
Or  the  green  corners  of  the  earth, 
Or  the  blue  regions  of  the  air 
Where  the  melodious  winds  have  birth  • 

Whether  on  chrystal  rocks  ye  rove, 
Beneath  the  bosom  of  the  sea 
Wand'ring  in  many  a  coral  grove, 
Fair  nine,  forsaking  Poetry  ! 

How  have  you  left  the  antient  love 
That  bards  of  old  enjoy'd  in  you! 
The  languid  strings  do  scarcely  move! 
The  sound  is  forc'd,  the  notes  are  few! 

Here  once  more  is  that  verbal  magic  which  had 
not  been  heard  in  English  since  the  last  echo  of 
the  Elizabethans  had  died  away— a  rediscovery- 
more  remarkable,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  than 
the  passionate  realism  of  Burns  or  the  homely 
intimacy  of  Cowper.  Blake's  reading,  in  fact, 
was  chiefly  among  those  older  poets,  and  at  times 
a  line  of  his  or  a  brief  passage  strikes  the  true 
Elizabethan  ring,  as  in  this  quaint  couplet : 

When  silver  snow  decks  Sylvia's  clothes, 
And  jewel  hangs  at  shepherd's  nose. 

But  more  often  a  poem  will  begin  with  some 
distinct  reminiscence  of  Shakespeare  or  Spenser, 
only  to  pass  into  a  liquid,  lisping  mysticism  far 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  22  7 

removed  from  the  spirit  of  those  robuster  poets  of 
the  world.  Such  a  song  as  the  following  might 
be  classed  as  standing  midway  between  Shake- 
speare and  Poe  : 

Memory,  hitlier  come, 
Aud  tune  your  merry  notes ; 
And,  while  upon  the  wind 
Your  music  floats, 
I  '11  pore  upon  the  stream 
Where  sighing  lovers  dream, 
And  fish  for  fancies  as  they  pass 
Within  the  watery  glass. 

I'll  drink  of  the  clear  stream, 

And  hear  the  linnet's  song; 

And  there  I'll  lie  and  dream 

The  day  along : 

And  when  night  comes,  I  '11  go 

To  places  fit  for  woe, 

Walking  along  the  darken'd  valley 

With  silent  Melancholy. 

At  bottom  his  work  is  not  so  much  an  attempt 
to  revive  an  earlier  art  as  a  personal  revolt  against 
the  present.  He  sought  above  all  that  immediacy 
of  impression  which  it  was  the  chief  aim  of  the 
age  to  avoid.  Thus,  Gray  and  Blake  are  both 
struck  by  the  resemblance  of  man's  ephemeral  life 
to  the  little  orbit  of  the  summer  insects.  With 
the  scholar  of  Cambridge  this  simple  image 
becomes  involved  in  ample  and  stately  language: 

To  Contemplation's  sober  eye 
Such  is  the  race  of  Man : 


2  28  SlIELBURNE    ESSAYS 

And  they  that  creep,  and  they  that  fly, 

Shall  end  where  they  began. 
Alike  the  Busy  and  the  Gay 
But  flutter  thro'  life's  little  day, 

In  Fortune's  varying  colours  drest; 
Brush'd  by  the  hand  of  rough  Mischance, 
Or  chill'd  by  Age,  their  airy  dance 

They  leave,  in  dust  to  rest. 

Methinks  I  hear,  in  accents  low, 

The  sportive  kind  reply : 
Poor  moralist !  and  what  art  thou  ? 

A  solitary  fly ! 

It  is  not  the  least  service  of  Mr.  Sampson's  vol- 
ume that  his  notes  show  in  the  most  striking 
manner  how  carefully  Blake  cherished  the  sim- 
pHcity  of  his  vision.  Here  we  may  see  the  first 
sketch  of  Blake's  poem,  which  sounds  almost  like 
a  clumsy  reminiscence  of  Gray : 

Woe !  alas !  my  guilty  hand 
Brush'd  across  thy  summer  joy ; 
All  thy  gilded  painted  pride 
Shatter'd,  fled.     .     .     . 

But  this  was  altered  for  publication  in  the  Songs 
of  Experience,  thus: 

Litae  Fly, 
Thy  summer's  play 
My  thoughtless  hand 
Has  brush'd  away. 

Am  not  I 
A  fly  like  thee? 
Or  art  not  thott 
A  man  like  me  ? 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  229 

For  I  dance, 
And  drink,  &  sing, 
Till  some  blind  hand 
Shall  brush  my  wing, 

I  do  not  say  that  Blake  is  here  more  successful 
than  Gray :  on  the  contrary,  I  am  convinced  that 
his  method  when  carried  to  its  extreme  is  more 
disastrous  to  poetry  than  the  most  rigid  conven- 
tion of  the  century;  but  the  difference  of  his 
procedure  from  Gray's  is  unmistakable.  You  feel 
in  these  tripping  lines,  disburdened  of  all  rhetoric, 
that  Blake  has  his  mind  directly  on  a  particular 
incident  and  its  application  to  himself,  whereas 
Gray  is  concerned  more  with  the  traditional  ex- 
perience of  mankind  and  its  generalised  expression. 
And  this  immediacy  reaches  with  Blake  far 
deeper  than  the  shell  of  language  and  metrical 
form.  It  was  a  theory  on  which  he  harped 
unceasingly  that  imagination  was  not  the  daugh- 
ter of  memory,  as  the  Greeks  would  have  it,  but 
a  faculty  of  direct  vision: 

We  are  led  to  believe  a  lie, 

When  we  see  with,  not  through,  the  eye. 

We  have  seen  how  as  a  guest  at  Felpham  he  lived 
in  the  midst  of  these  imaginary  forms.  Late  in 
life  he  became  acquainted  with  John  Varley,  the 
water-colour  artist,  who  used  to  feed  a  rather 
morbid  craving  for  the  supernatural  by  calling  on 
Blake  to  portray  these  aerial  visitants,  "Draw 
me  Moses,"  he  would  say,  "or  David,  or  the  man 
who  built  the  pyramids" ;  and  Blake  would  sketch 


230  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

out  the  face  with  the  utmost  rapidity,  looking  up 
from  time  to  time  as  if  the  object  were  really 
before  him.  One  of  these  Spiritual  Portraits  was 
the  famous  "Ghost  of  a  Flea,"  which  no  one  who 
has  beheld  can  ever  forget.  Southey,  in  The 
Doctor,  quotes  Barley's  account  of  this  strange 
occurrence : 

The  spirit  visited  his  [Blake's]  imagination  in  such  a 
figure  as  he  never  anticipated  in  an  insect.  As  I  was 
anxious  to  make  the  most  correct  investigation  in  my 
power  of  the  truth  of  these  visions,  on  hearing  of  this 
spiritual  apparition  of  a  Flea,  I  asked  him  if  he  could 
draw  for  me  the  resemblance  of  what  he  saw.  He  in- 
stantly said,  "  I  see  him  now  before  me."  I  therefore 
gave  him  paper  and  pencil,  with  which  he  drew  the  por- 
trait of  which  a  facsimile  is  given  in  this  number  {qI  A 
Treatise  on  Zodaical  Physiognorny\.  I  felt  convinced,  by 
his  mode  of  proceeding,  that  he  had  a  real  image  before 
him ;  for  he  left  off  and  began  on  another  part  of  the 
paper  to  make  a  separate  drawing  of  the  mouth  of  the 
Flea,  which  the  spirit  having  opened,  he  was  prevented 
from  proceeding  with  the  first  sketch  till  he  had  closed 
it.  During  the  time  occupied  in  completing  the  drawing, 
the  Flea  told  him  that  all  fleas  were  inhabited  by  the 
souls  of  such  men  as  were  by  nature  blood-thirsty  to  ex- 
cess, aud  were  therefore  providentially  confined  to  the 
size  and  form  of  insects. 

It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  a  man  who  felt 
himself  to  be  in  immediate  contact  with  the 
spiritual  world  should  have  rejected  the  theology 
and  morality  of  the  day  for  a  religion  of  his  own. 

'  For  a  curious  parallel  earlier  in  the  century  to  Blake's 
rejection  of  the  letter  of  religion  and  to  his  use  of  sym- 
bolism, see  the  lucubrations  of  the  deist  Thomas  Woolston. 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  231 

Those  who  have  the  courage  to  track  his  thought 
through  the  labyrinth  of  the  so-called  Prophetic 
Books  will,  when  their  first  bewilderment  has 
subsided,  be  astonished  at  the  logical  system  that 
begins  to  appear  through  much  of  this  amorphous 
imagery  and  grotesque  verbiage.  I  shall  not  at- 
tempt to  write  an  exegesis  of  those  books,  or  to 
point  out  the  rarer  passages  in  them  of  pellucid 
beauty  and  wisdom.  Mr.  Swinburne  has  per- 
formed that  task  admirably  well  in  his  essay  on 
Blake,  and  deserves  special  gratitude  and  recogni- 
tion from  one  who  takes  offence  at  most  of  his 
critical  work.  But  without  entering  into  the 
details  of  Blake's  system  one  may  say  that  here, 
at  least,  is  no  compromise  with  the  imagination. 
The  business  of  the  poet,  he  held,  was  to  cleanse 
the  eyes  so  as  to  discern  the  eternal  ideas  of  Plato, 
not  as  the  mere  deductions  of  dialectic,  but  as  real 
and  palpable  existences.  "In  eternity  one  thing 
never  changes  into  another  thing,"  he  said, 
speaking  the  very  language  of  the  Academy  ;  yet 
at  bottom  the  state  of  his  mind  was  more  like  that 
of  the  early  Hindu  philosophers  than  that  of  the 
followers  of  the  Greek,  and  those  who  have  been 
bewildered  by  the  union  in  the  Upanishads  of 
childish  nonsense  with  sudden  flashes  of  spiritual 
insight  may,  by  a  strange  anomaly  of  circum- 
stances, find  the  nearest  Occidental  parallel  to  that 
combination  in  an  Knglish  poet  of  the  eighteenth 
century.  And  this  resemblance  is  curiously 
enhanced  by  Blake's  nomenclature.     His  state  of 


232  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

mind  was  not  so  much  mythopoeic  as  logopceic. 
As  with  the  early  sages  of  the  Ganges,  words  of 
meaningless  sound  seem  to  have  possessed  a 
fascination  for  him,  and  to  have  assumed  the 
force  of  supernatural  entities.  Some  of  these 
extraordinary  names  are  evidently  echoes  in  his 
memory  of  the  sonorous  syllables  of  "Ossian"; 
others,  such  as"Nobodaddy"  for  nobody's  daddy, 
are  puerile  attempts  at  humour ;  while  others 
again  baffle  all  attempts  at  elucidation.  They  are 
employed,  one  soon  discovers  to  his  amazement, 
with  perfect  consistency  and  with  a  kind  of  idola- 
trous reverence.  They  are  the  shorthand,  so  to 
speak,  of  his  philosophy,  and  they  are  something 
more  than  that;  there  was  efficacy  to  Blake  in 
their  very  utterance.  But  if  this  wisdom  of 
immediate  spiritual  vision  coming  to  us  out  of  the 
babble  of  uncouth  words  has  at  first  an  extraordi- 
nary resemblance  to  the  forest  philosophies  of 
India,  the  final  impression  left  upon  the  reader  is 
by  no  means  the  same.  The  Upanishads  are  not 
personal  or  anomalous,  but  represent  the  search- 
ing in  remote  ways  of  a  whole  people;  whereas 
the  very  isolation  of  Blake  in  his  age  and  country 
throws  a  kind  of  abnormal  glamour  over  his 
work.  "I  am  really  drunk  with  intellectual 
vision,"  he  exclaims.  Instead  of  a  profound 
universal  experience,  we  have  here  the  idiosyn- 
crasy, if  not  the  madness,  of  solitary  introspec- 
tion— so  perilous  is  it  to  approach  alone  and 
unattended    the    inviolable  sanctuarv   of  truth. 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  233 

Like  Cassandra  and  Teiresias  and  the  other 
prophets  of  Greece,  the  seeing  mortal  is  cursed 
with  confusion  of  speech  for  his  audacity. 

Certainly  to  most  readers  not  a  small  part  of 
the  Prophetic  Books  is  pure  raving,  whatever  the 
ideas  may  be  that  lie  concealed.  For  myself,  I 
have  been  particularly  struck  by  the  relation 
between  them  and  the  lyrical  poems — a  relation 
not  always  of  sequence  in  time,  but  of  character. 
The  travail  of  soul  that  went  into  the  recording  of 
those  apocalyptic  visions  is  like  nothing  so  much 
as  some  Titanic  upheaval  of  nature,  accompanied 
with  confused  outpourings  of  fire  and  smoke  and 
molten  lava,  with  rending  and  crushing  and  grind- 
ing, and  with  dark  revelations  of  the  unspeakable 
abyss.  And  afterwards,  in  the  midst  of  these 
gnarled  and  broken  remains,  he  who  seeks  shall 
find  scattered  bits  of  coloured  stone,  flawed  and 
imperfect  fragments  for  the  most  part,  with  here 
and  there  a  rare  and  starlike  gem.  Mr.  Sampson 
has  thrown  light  on  this  process  of  crystallisation 
by  quoting  copiously  from  the  Prophetic  Books 
in  illustration  of  his  text  of  the  lyrical  poems,  and 
those  who  are  curious  in  this  matter  may  be 
referred  particularly  to  his  notes  on  The  Crystal 
Cabinet,  with  the  extracts  from  the  Jerusalem 
and  the  Milton  there  given. 

If  any  doubt  as  to  the  essential  coherency  of 
Blake's  thought  still  remains,  let  the  reader  turn 
back  from  The  Crystal  Cabinet  to  the  Song  writ- 
ten, it  is  said,  before  the  age    of  fourteen,  in 


234  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

which   the  same  idea  is  expressed  by  the  same 
metaphor  : 

How  sweet  I  roam'd  from  field  to  field 
And  tasted  all  the  summer's  pride, 
'Till  I  the  prince  of  love  beheld 
Who  in  the  sunny  beams  did  glide ! 

He  shew'd  me  lilies  for  my  hair, 
And  blushing  roses  for  my  brow; 
He  led  me  through  his  gardens  fair 
Where  all  his  golden  pleasures  grow. 

With  sweet  May  dews  my  wings  were  wet, 

And  Phoebus  fir'd  my  vocal  rage; 

He  [the  prince  of  love]  caught  me  in  his  silken  net, 

And  shut  me  in  his  golden  cage. 

He  loves  to  sit  and  hear  me  sing, 
Then,  laughing,  sports  and  plays  with  me ; 
Then  stretches  out  my  golden  wing. 
And  mocks  my  loss  of  liberty. 

There  in  germ  may  be  found  pretty  much  all 
the  philosophy  that  ramifies  so  egregiously  in  the 
Prophetic  Books.  Out  of  the  knowledge  of  life 
springs  the  moral  law,  having  a  beauty  of  its 
own,  but  holding  the  spirit  of  man  within  its 
bounds  as  in  a  golden  cage.  The  true  wisdom  is 
nothing  more  than  a  recognition  of  the  contrast 
between  the  states  of  Innocence  and  Experience— 
a  contrast  which  he  sets  forth  in  the  names 
given  to  the  two  collections  of  Songs,  and  in  many 
a  naive  parable : 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  235 

I  heard  an  Angel  singing 
When  the  day  was  springing: 
"Mercy,  Pity,  Peace 
Is  the  world's  release." 

Thus  he  sang  all  day 
Over  the  new  mown  hay, 
Till  the  sun  went  down, 
And  haycocks  looked  brown. 

I  heard  a  Devil  curse 
Over  the  heath  &  the  furze : 
*'  Mercy  could  be  no  more 
If  there  was  nobody  poor, 

"  And  pity  no  more  could  be. 
If  all  were  as  happy  as  we." 
At  his  curse  the  sun  went  down 
And  the  heavens  gave  a  frown. 

Experience  sets  up  in  the  Garden  of  Love  the 
priest's  chapel  with  "Thou  shalt  not"  written 
over  the  door;  experience  teaches  us  to  doubt 
the  reality  of  our  visions,  to  substitute  reason  for 
intuition,  to  mistrust  the  spontaneity  of  our 
emotions,  to  surrender  our  primitive  impulses  to 
the  dictates  of  religion;  experience  is  the  fall  of 
man,  the  sin  of  the  world,  above  all  the  curse  of 
the  age  in  which  Blake  himself  was  to  live  and 
suffer  and  sing.  The  mission  of  his  art,  there- 
fore, as  of  his  theosophy,  was  to  return  to  a 
condition  of  childlike  innocence.  There  is  no 
thought  of  retracing  laboriously  the  path  of 
experience;  there  is  no  image  in  his  poems  like 


236  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

the  picture  of  the  haggard  old  man  in  The  City  of 
Dreadful  Night,  crawling 

From  this  accursed  night  without  a  mom, 

And  through  the  deserts  which  have  else  no  track, 
And  through  vast  wastes  of  horror-haunted  time, 
To  Eden  innocence  in  Eden's  clime. 

Rather  his  philosophy  hints  of  revolutions  of 
birth  and  rebirth,  of  experience  returning  natur- 
ally into  the  innocence  from  which  it  sprung. 
Occasionally  in  conversation  he  spoke  of  transmi- 
gration as  a  life-history  of  which  in  his  own  case 
he  was  fully  conscious  ;  but  more  commonl}%  as 
in  The  Mental  Traveller  it  is  not  so  much  a 
question  of  reincarnation  as  of  mystical  regenera- 
tion. "Whenever  any  individual  rejects  error 
and  embraces  truth,"  he  says,  "a  Last  Judgment 
passes  upon  that  individual ' ' ;  the  evil  of  experi- 
ence is  wiped  away,  and  the  man  becomes  now 
and  here  as  a  child  to  whom  the  windows  of 
heaven  are  opened. 

It  is  the  peculiar  merit  of  his  verse  that  it 
really  gives  the  impression  of  childlikeness  and 
a  kind  of  dewy  freshness.  One  feels  this  in  a 
thousand  places — in  such  lines  as  those  to  an  in- 
fant, which  Swinburne  regards  as  the  loveliest 
he  ever  wrote : 

Sleep,  sleep :  in  thy  sleep 
Little  sorrows  sit  and  weep ; 

and  in  such  stanzas  as  these  in  which  the  poet's 


WILLIAM    BLAKE  237 

song  and  the  wild  flower's  song  blend  together  to 
make  a  single  melody : 

As  I  wander'd  the  forest, 
The  green  leaves  among, 
I  heard  a  wild  flower 
Singing  a  song. 

"  I  slept  in  the  Earth 
In  the  silent  night, 
I  murmur'd  my  fears 
And  I  felt  delight. 

"  In  the  morning  I  went. 
As  rosy  as  mom. 
To  seek  for  new  Joy ; 
But  I  met  with  scorn." 

If  one  wishes  to  see  the  difference  between  this 
identification  of  the  poet  with  the  naive  emotions 
of  childhood  and  the  contemplation  of  these 
emotions  through  experience,  let  him  compare 
these  lines  with  Goethe's  "Ich  ging  im  Walde." 
Again,  I  do  not  mean  that  Blake  is  for  this  reason 
the  higher  poet;  I  mean  merely  to  distinguish. 
The  true  commentary  on  Blake  is  to  read  him 
side  by  side  with  Wordsworth's  Intimations  of 
Immortality,  where  the  beauty  of  childhood  is 
seen  frankly  through  the  medium  of  memory,  and 
there  is  no  attempt  to  deny  or  escape  the  burden 
of  experience.  The  result  of  Blake's  method  is  in 
one  sense  curiously  paradoxical.  He  was  himself 
the  sincerest  of  poets;  his  faculty  of  immediate 
contact   is  perfectly  genuine,  and  yet  the  mood 


238  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

induced  in  most  readers  is  one  perilously  akin  to 
aflfectation.  We  feel  the  aerial  transparency  and 
the  frail  loveliness  of  his  inspiration,  and  for  a 
moment  and  by  a  kind  of  ritualistic  self-purgation 
we  may  identify  ourselves  with  his  mood — but 
only  for  awhile  and  at  rare  intervals.  For  the  most 
part  a  little  investigation  will  detect  a  slight  note 
of  insincerity  in  our  enjoyment,  and,  having 
discovered  this,  we  fall  back  on  the  poets  who 
accept  fully  the  experience  of  the  human  heart. 
We  find  something  closer  to  our  understanding, 
something  for  that  reason  wholesomer,  in  men  like 
Wordsworth  and  Goethe — perhaps  even  in  the 
more  formal  poets  of  Blake's  own  age.  For  after 
all  it  is  not  the  ofi&ce  of  the  true  poet  to  baffle  the 
longing  heart  with  charms  of  self-deception,  and 
we  are  men  in  a  world  of  men.  The  unmitigated 
admiration  and  the  eflfective  influence  of  Blake 
are  to  be  found  not  among  the  greater  romantic 
writers  of  the  early  nineteenth  century,  but  among 
the  lesser  men — Rossetti,  Swinburne,  and  their 
school — who  in  one  way  or  another  have  shrunk 
from  the  higher  as  well  as  the  lower  realities  of 
Ufe. 


THE  THEME  OF  "  PARADISE  LOST" 

It  was  not  so  very  long  ago  that  a  professor 
of  English  in  a  great  university  had  the  audacity 
to  declare  in  print  that  "no  one  nowadays  would 
read  Paradise  Lost  for  pleasure  ! ' '  The  statement 
is  a  generalisation  from  the  gentleman's  own 
delinquencies  mayhap,  but  it  does  unfortunately 
approach  too  near  the  actual  truth  to  be  com- 
fortable. And  partly,  I  think,  Milton  suffers 
this  neglect  because  the  true  theme  of  his  poem 
is  not  commonly  understood,  and  the  ordinary 
reader  from  false  tradition  allows  his  mind  to 
seek  out  and  dwell  on  what  are  not  properly  its 
characteristic  beauties.  For,  apart  from  style 
and  execution  (in  which  no  one  would  deny 
supreme  excellence  to  Milton,  so  that  these  may 
be  eliminated  from  the  question),  the  underlying 
motive  of  a  work  has  much  to  do  with  its  abid- 
ing hold  on  our  interest ;  and  so  true  is  this  that 
a  false  opinion  in  regard  to  its  motive  may 
deprive  a  poem  of  the  popularity  rightly  its  due. 

Now  in  order  to  the  possession  of  this  enduring 
vitality  two  distinct  elements  must  enter  into  the 
constitution  of  an  epic :  it  must  be  built  upon  a 
theme  deeply  rooted  in  national  belief,  and, 
further,  the  development  of  this  theme  must 
express,  more  or  less  symbolically,  some  universal 
239 


240  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

truth  of  human  nature.  The  first  requisite  is 
indeed  a  truism  of  the  critics,  who  find  it  fully 
satisfied  in  the  Trojan  war  of  Homer,  in  the 
wanderings  of  ^neas  and  the  founding  of  Rome, 
in  the  political  allegory  of  Dante.  Milton  him- 
self, in  recognition  of  this  need,  meditated  for  many 
years  on  the  Arthurian  wars  as  an  epic  subject, 
and,  later,  Tennyson  did  actually  weave  the 
fabulous  story  of  the  Round  Table  into  his  Idyls 
of  the  King.  But  this  national  interest  alone  is 
not  sufficient.  Behind  it  there  must  rest  some 
great  human  truth,  some  appeal  to  universal 
human  aspirations,  decked  in  the  garb  of  symbol- 
ism. The  poet  himself  may  not  be  fully  conscious 
of  this  deeper  meaning,  and  the  manner  of  its 
involution  is  something  quite  different  from  the 
methods  of  the  so-called  school  of  symbolists,  but 
there  it  must  lie,  hidden  or  manifest ; — such  a 
symbolic  truth,  for  example,  as  we  apprehend  in 
the  Iliad,  whose  scenes  of  battle  as  we  read  them 
come  to  typify,  vaguely  it  may  be,  the  inevitable 
stress  and  struggle  of  life.  For,  like  those 
warriors  on  the  Trojan  plain,  we  are  driven  by  an 
irresistible  summons  into  the  contention  of  the 
world,  and  still,  like  them,  we  are  filled  with 
futile  longings  for  repose  and  with  unappeased 
nostalgia.  And  the  prize  we  strive  for  is  like  that 
strange,  mysteriously  gliding  emblem  of  beauty 
and  delight  which  lured  the  Achaeans  over  the 
seas, — 

the  face  that  launched  a  thousand  ships. 


THE    THEME    OF    PARADISE    LOST       24I 

Nor  need  we  hesitate  to  let  the  imagination  play 
freely  with  this  least  allegorical  of  poems,  for 
even  before  the  days  of  Herodotus  Helen  had 
become  an  evasive  symbol  of  the  beauty  we  seek 
and  cannot  find.  She  never  was  at  Troy  at  all, 
the  historian  declares,  but  was  hidden  away  in 
Bgypt  while  a  mere  phantom  shape  appeared  to 
the  warriors ;  and  this  the  Greeks  discovered 
when  they  had  sacked  the  city  and  "made  clear 
to  mankind  the  lesson  that  great  wrongs  are 
greatly  punished  by  the  gods." 

These  two  elements,  then,  the  basis  in  popular 
belief  and  the  symbolic  meaning,  are  equally 
indispensable  to  an  epic  and  must  exist  side  by 
side.  If  the  national  basis  alone  is  present  the 
poem  loses  its  hold  on  the  reading  world  as  soon 
as  its  theme  becomes  antiquated.  If  it  contains 
in  symbolic  guise  some  universal  human  truth  but 
is  not  founded  on  what  to  the  poet  and  his  co- 
temporaries  seemed  a  vital  and  credible  reality,  it 
descends  forthwith  into  the  chill  region  of  alle- 
gory; it  may  perhaps  attract  attention  as  a  work 
of  curiosity,  but  it  can  never  come  close  to  the 
heart  and  take  firm  hold  on  the  affections. 

So  strong  is  the  demand  for  a  national  basis  in 
an  epic  that  there  have  not  been  wanting  scholars 
to  regret  that  Milton  finally  forsook  his  original 
purpose  of  treating  the  Arthurian  wars.  But  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  the  fables  of  Arthur  were  in  no 
wise  bound  up  with  English  religion  or  tradition. 
They  meant  nothing  to  England  then  and  mean 
16 


242  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

nothing  to  her  now,  whereas  the  story  of  Genesis 
was  a  living  reahty  to  the  people  and  the  most 
truly  national  theme  at  the  poet's  disposal.  The 
minds  of  the  people  and  their  literature  were 
saturated  with  Old  Testament  ideas.  Thence 
came  their  religion  and  the  force  that  sustained 
them  in  their  rebellious  fight  for  liberty.  It  is 
moreover  a  fact  that  something  in  the  British 
temperament  approached  more  nearly  the  He- 
braic spirit  than  has  that  of  any  other  people 
of  history.  The  zeal  of  righteousness,  the  hard 
activity,  the  harshness  of  judgment,  and  even  the 
inordinate  desire  for  acquisition, — all  these  things 
made  a  subject  from  the  Old  Testament  truly 
national  in  those  times.  And  still  to-day  some 
echo  of  this  note  is  heard  in  British  verse;  we 
catch  it  in  Ki-plmg^ sJ^ecesswnal,  in  his  Hymn  Be- 
fore Actio7i,  and  in  his  most  patriotic  poem,  A  Song 
of  the  English. 

But  it  is  only  too  certain  that  this  immediate 
appeal  of  Paradise  Lost  has  been  dulled  by  the 
lapse  of  time.  The  stories  of  Genesis  do  not 
strike  us  to-day  as  immediately  and  literally  true; 
they  even  leave  the  average  reader  colder  than  the 
myths  of  ancient  Greece,  because  they  are  drawn 
from  a  more  restricted  field  of  our  human  nature. 
And  if  you  care  to  see  how  far  the  Hebraic 
machinery  of  Cromwellian  England  falls  short  of 
universal  acceptance,  you  need  only  turn  to  the 
brilliant  analysis  of  Para  dise  Lost  in  Taine,  where 
the  whole  supernatural  and  earthly  plan  of  the 


THE  THEME    OF    PARADISE    LOST       243 

poem  is  passed  through  the  fires  of  French  wit. 
And  yet,  incredible  as  it  may  sound, — and  this  is 
the  very  point  at  issue, — the  ingenious  Frenchman 
does  not  once  mention  the  real  theme  of  the  poem 
he  analyses  and  ridicules,  the  real  theme  which 
lies  like  a  warming  sun  at  the  centre  of  this 
otherwise  frigid  system,  and  which  lends  to  the 
whole  scheme  lasting  and  universal  significance. 
The  absolute  verity  of  the  Hebraic  machinery,  as 
it  appeared  to  Milton  and  his  contemporaries, 
gave  to  the  work  the  necessary  basis  of  realism 
and  sanity;  the  symbolic  meaning  of  its  true  but 
less  flaunted  theme  carries  it  quite  beyond  the 
narrow  claims  of  Puritanic  England  and  associates 
it  with  the  epics  of  the  world. 

Sin  is  not  the  innermost  subject  of  Milton's 
epic,  nor  man's  disobedience  and  fall;  these  are 
but  the  tragic  shadows  cast  about  the  central 
light.  Justification  of  the  waj^s  of  God  to  man  is 
not  the  true  moral  of  the  plot:  this  and  the  whole 
divine  drama  are  merely  the  poet's  means  of 
raising  his  conception  to  the  highest  generalisa- 
tion. The  true  theme  is  Paradise  itself;  not 
Paradise  lost,  but  the  reality  of  that  "happy  rural 
seat ' '  where  the  errant  tempter  beheld 

To  all  delight  of  human  sense  exposed 

In  narrow  room  nature's  whole  wealth,  yea  more, 

A  heaven  on  earth. 

This  truth,  indeed,  we  might  have  learned  from 
Tennyson  who,  with  a  fellow-craftsman's  sympa- 


244  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

thetic  insight,  discerned  what  gave  the  poem  its 
profound  value  and  interest.  Not  the  Titan  angels 
or  the  roar  of  angel  onset  was  to  Tennyson  the 
significant  matter.  "  Me  rather,"  he  sings  in  his 
musical  Alcaics, 

Me  rather  all  that  bowery  loneliness. 
The  brooks  of  Eden  mazily  murmuring, 
And  bloom  profuse  and  cedar  arches 
Charm,  as  a  wanderer  out  in  ocean, 
Where  some  refulgent  sunset  of  India 
Streams  o'er  a  rich  ambrosial  ocean  isle. 

There  lies,  you  may  know,  the  veritable  matter 
of  Paradise  Lost.  It  is  the  good  fortune  of 
English  literature  that  the  Hebraic  preoccupa- 
tions of  her  epic  poet  led  him  to  adopt  a  theme 
whose  origin  is  that  ancient  ineradicable  longing 
of  the  human  heart  for  a  garden  of  innocence,  a 
paradise  of  idyllic  delights,  a  region  to  which 
come  only  "golden  days  fruitful  of  golden  deeds." 
Turn  where  you  will  in  mythology  and  literature, 
and  you  will  find  this  pastoral  ideal  haunting  the 
imagination  of  men;  less  pronounced  possibly  in 
early  days  when  pastoral  life  was  a  reality,  more 
emphasised  as  civilisation  grows  complex  and 
carries  us  away  from  nature.  Were  one  to  attempt 
to  display  its  universality  by  illustration,  one 
would  need  to  abridge  the  libraries  of  the  world 
into  a  few  pages.  It  is  the  Hesperian  gardens 
of  Homer  to  which  Menelaus  was  to  pass  un- 
scathed for  his  love  of  Helen's  divine  beauty, — 


THE    THEME    OF    PARADISE    LOST      245 

the  land  from  whicli  Tennyson  borrowed  his 
picture  of 

the  island-valley  of  Avilion; 

Where  falls  not  hail,  or  rain,  or  any  snow, 

Nor  ever  wind  blows  loudly. 

It  is  the  dream  of  a  Golden  Satumian  Age  found 
among  many  peoples,  and  so  well  portrayed  by 
Hesiod  in  his  picture  of  the  days  when  "men  lived 
like  the  gods  with  careless  heart,  far  oflf  from 
labours  and  sorrow."  It  was  the  theme  of  the 
Sicilian  idyls  of  Theocritus.  From  it  Virgil  drew 
the  tenderest  and  most  thrilling  note  of  Latin,  I 
had  almost  said  of  European,  poetry: 

O  fortunatos  nimium,  sua  si  bona  norint, 
Agricolas ! 

It  is  the  Tir-nan-og  of  the  Celts,  the  country  of 
the  young,  the  Land  of  the  Living  Heart  as  it 
used  to  be  called,  the  old  Paradise  which  to  the 
Irish  peasant  lies  everywhere  near  at  hand  though 
hidden  from  sight,  a  shadow-land  indeed  like  the 
ideals  which  have  invested  Irish  poetry  with  their 
mist  of  illusive  beauty  : 

All  the  way  to  Tir-nan-og  are  many  roads  that  run. 

But  the  darkest  road  is  trodden  by  the  King  of  Ireland's 

son. 
The  world  wears  on  to  sundown,  and  love  is  lost  and 

won. 
But  he  recks  not  of  loss  and  gain,  the  King  of  Ireland's 

son. 
He  follows  on  forever,  when  all  your  chase  is  done, 
He  follows  after  shadows— the  King  of  Ireland's  son. 


246  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

And  if  in  more  modem  literature  we  are  some- 
times disgusted  with  the  puerihties  and  frigid 
conceits  of  Arcadias  and  Arcadian  romances  from 
Sannazzaro  down,  let  us  not  forget  that  the  greatest 
period  of  our  own  literature,  the  many-tongued 
Elizabethan  age,  where  the  very  wildernesses  of 
verse  are  filled  with   Pentecostal  eloquence  and 

airy  tongues  that  syllable  men's  names, 

let  US  not  forget  that  the  dramas  and  tales,  the 
epics  and  lyrics,  of  that  period,  from  Spenser  to 
Milton,  are  more  concerned  with  this  one  ideal  of 
a  Golden  Age  wrought  out  in  some  "imitation  of 
the  fields  of  bliss,"  than  with  any  other  single 
matter.  Shakespeare's  sweetest  scenes  are  de- 
voted to  the  idyllic  Forest  of  Arden  and  to 
Perdita's  shepherd  home;  and  you  may  recognise 
his  hand  in  a  play  of  mixed  authorship  when 
King  Henry  cries  out: 

Ah,  what  a  life  were  this !  how  sweet ;  how  lovely ! 

It  is,  the  world  over,  youth's  vision  and  age's 
dream  of  a  happiness  that  never  was  on  land  or 
sea;  it  is  the  glimmering  of  those  "  trailing  clouds 
of  glory"  which,  to  Wordsworth's  fancy,  follow 
us  from  somewhere  afar  off  into  the  darkness  of 
our  birth. 

It  should  seem  that  Milton  aimed  to  combine  all 
these  fleeting  impressions  of  a  golden  pastoral 
age  and  so  to  blend  them  as  to  produce  one  perfect 
picture  of  Eden. 


THE    THEME    OF    PARADISE    LOST       247 

Not  that  fair  field 
Of  Bnna,  where  Proserpine  gathering  flowers, 
Herself  a  fairer  flower,  by  gloomy  Dis 
Was  gathered,  which  cost  Ceres  all  that  pain 
To  seek  her  through  the  world ;  nor  that  sweet  grove 
Of  Daphne  by  Orontes,  and  the  inspired 
Castalian  spring  might  with  this  paradise 
Of  Eden  strive, — 

he  writes,  and  enlarges  the  comparison  through  a 
paragraph.  There,  in  that  garden,  dwelt  pure 
content  and  peace,  simple  desires  and  love  and 
innocent  cares.  Thither  came  the  messengers  of 
the  Lord,  bringing  with  them  the  effulgence  of 
the  celestial  courts,  the  beauty  of  whose  pure 
light  could  rest  lovingly  on  this  unalienated  home 
of  joy.  And  there,  the  guardians  of  it  all,  dwelt 
the  primal  pair  in  undisturbed  innocence, — 

For  contemplation  he,  and  valour  formed; 
For  softness  she,  and  sweet  attractive  grace. 

And  there  resided  mutual  love,  the  sweetness  of 
whose  influence  has  been  told  by  many  poets  but 
by  none  so  perfectly  as  by  the  creator  of  these  gar- 
den scenes  of  Eden.  In  the  night  when  the  little 
tasks  of  the  day  are  done  and  all  things  are  calling 
to  repose,  we  may  hear  the  lovers  reckoning  up 
their  measure  of  content.     It  is  Eve  who  speaks: 

Sweet  is  the  breath  of  morn,  her  rising  sweet, 
With  charm  of  earliest  birds ;  pleasant  the  sun. 
When  first  on  this  delightful  land  he  spreads 
His  orient  beams,  on  herb,  tree,  fruit,  and  flower, 
Glistering  with  dew:  fragrant  the  fertile  earth 
After  soft  showers  ;  and  sweet  the  coming  on 


248  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

Of  grateful  evening  mild;  then  silent  night, 
With  this  her  solemn  bird,  and  this  fair  moon, 
And  these  the  gems  of  heaven,  her  starry  train: 
But  neither  breath  of  morn,  when  she  ascends 
With  charm  of  earliest  birds  ;  nor  rising  sun 
On  this  delightful  land ;  nor  herb,  fruit,  flower. 
Glistering  with  dew  ;  nor  fragrance  after  showers, 
Nor  grateful  evening  mild  ;  nor  silent  night, 
With  this  her  solemn  bird  ;  nor  walk  by  moon, 
Or  glittering  starlight,  without  thee  is  sweet. 

And  when  at  the  end  she  inquires  why  all  night 
long  these  lights  of  heaven  shine  though  he  and 
she  have  closed  their  eyes  in  sleep,  as  if  with  the 
ceasing  of  their  mutual  consciousness  of  love  there 
could  be  no  meaning  or  purpose  in  that  great 
display  of  beauty,  then  Adam  replies  to  her  : 

Millions  of  spiritual  creatures  walk  the  earth 
Unseen,  both  when  we  wake,  and  when  we  sleep; 
All  these  with  ceaseless  praise  his  works  behold 
Both  day  and  night.      How  often  from  the  steep 
Of  echoing  hill  or  thicket  have  we  heard 
Celestial  voices  to  the  midnight  air, 
Sole  or  responsive  each  to  other's  note. 
Singing  their  great  Creator !  oft  in  bands 
While  they  keep  watch,  or  nightly  rounding  walk. 
With  heavenly  touch  of  instrumental  sounds 
In  full  harmonic  number  joined,  their  songs 
Divide  the  night,  and  lift  our  thoughts  to  heaven. 

And  so  talking,  hand  in  hand,  the  first  of  human 
lovers  pass  alone  on  to  their  blissful  bower,  where 
under  foot  the  violet,  the  crocus,  and  every 
beauteous  flower  broiders  the  ground  with  rich 
inlay.     So  high  and  pure  is  the  theme  and  so 


THE    THEME    OF    PARADISE    LOST      249 

lifted  up  the  style  that  we  do  not  pause  to  con- 
sider that  after  all  we  are  reading  only  what  a 
score  of  Elizabethan  poets  have  described, 
beautifully  indeed  but  less  sublimely,  in  their 
Arcadian  idyls.  Indeed  if  we  wish  to  learn  the 
true  kinship  of  Milton's  genius,  we  need  only 
turn  to  the  long  "linked  sweetness"  of  William 
Browne's  Pas iora/s,  and  to  the  story  of  Amintas 
and  Fida  in  particular,  where  all  the  delights  of 
nature  are  pressed  into  a  similar  service  of  happy 
lovers: 

O  how  the  flowers  (pressed  with  their  treadings  on  them) 

Strove  to  cast  up  their  heads  to  look  upon  them ! 

How  jealously  the  buds  that  so  had  seen  them 

Sent  forth  the  sweetest  smells  to  step  between  them, 

As  fearing  the  perfume  lodged  in  their  powers 

Once  known  of  them,  they  might  neglect  the  flowers. 

The  details  of  the  two  scenes  are  different  and  the 
grand  style  of  Milton  is  in  Browne  lowered  by 
the  search  for  pretty  conceits,  but  the  spirit  is 
after  all  the  same.  In  the  groves  of  Tavistock, 
as  in  the  garden  of  Eden,  dwells  love  whose  sweet 

encouragement  can  make  a  swain 
Climb  by  his  song  where  none  but  souls  attain. 

With  propriety  this  pastoral  scene,  with  its 
symbolism  that  embraces  some  of  the  deepest 
desires  and  regrets  of  the  human  heart,  is  set  in 
the  middle  books  of  the  epic,  just  as  a  painter 
places  the  most  important  object  of  his  picture  in 
the  centre  of  his  composition  and  throws  upon  it 


250  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

the  highest  light.  Before  and  after  are  the  darker 
hues  that  direct  the  eye  infaUibly  to  the  dominant 
figure.  In  the  two  opening  books  stands  that 
picture  of  the  "regions  of  sorrow,  doleful  shades, 
where  peace  and  rest  can  never  dwell "  ;  and  as  in 
the  description  of  Paradise  the  poet  gathered 
together  beauties  from  all  the  fabulous  gardens  of 
antiquity,  so  here  he  shows  nature  given  up  to 
breeding 

Perverse,  all  monstrous,  all  prodigious  things, 
Abominable,  inutterable,  and  worse 
Than  fables  yet  have  feigned,  or  fear  conceived, 
Gorgons,  and  Hydras,  and  Chimeras  dire. 

And  in  the  setting  of  this  fiery  gloom  all  the 
vices  most  contrary  to  idyllic  happiness  are  pre- 
sented in  vivid  poetical  form  by  means  of  personi- 
fication. As  content  may  be  called  the  crowning 
and  creative  virtue  of  the  pastoral  world,  so 
Satan,  the  lord  of  the  demonic  crew,  stands  for 
pride  and  evil  ambition.  With  him  in  that  senate 
of  hell  are  Moloch,  grim  and  terrible,  the  destroyer 
of  peace,  who  cries  out  for  open  violence;  Belial, 
"than  whom  a  spirit  more  lewd  fell  not  from 
heaven,"  he  who  counsels  "ignoble  ease  and 
perfect  sloth"  for  the  better  working  of  his  lust; 
Mammon,  the  prince  of  wealth  and  luxury,  to 
escape  whose  contamination  most  of  all  things 
the  poets  laid  out  their  simple  gardens  of  content; 
and  Beelzebub,  greatest  of  all  save  Satan  himself, 
who  represents  malice  and  hatred  and  every  pas- 
sion most  abhorrent  to  the  love  and  loving  kindness 


THE    THEME    OF    PARADISE    LOST      25 1 

of  Eden.  Than  this  contrasted  picture  of  utter 
darkness,  this  plotting  of  violence  and  revenge, 
and  the  exit  of  Satan  through  the  guarded  gates 
of  hell,  no  more  artistic  preparation  could  be 
conceived  for  the  idyllic  scenes  and  virtues  of 
Paradise. 

In  like  manner,  when  temptation  has  crept  into 
the  garden  and  forever  broken  its  charm,  and 
when  the  guilty  pair  have  awaked  to  a  sense  of 
their  wretchedness,  then  Michael,  the  angel  of  the 
Lord,  takes  Adam  to  a  high  mountain  and  from 
there  displays  to  him  in  the  form  of  a  vast  pano- 
rama all  the  toil  and  pain  and  lingering  strife  of 
actual  human  history.  It  is  the  reality  of  life  set 
like  a  shadow  against  the  brief  and  golden  dream 
of  Paradise.  Hand  in  hand,  with  solitary  steps 
and  slow,  the  man  and  woman  go  out  into  the 
harsh  experiences  of  the  world;  but  through  all 
the  generations  of  their  children,  through  all  the 
days  of  labour  and  degradation  that  are  to  succeed, 
the  memory  of  that  happy  garden  shall  follow, — 
a  memory  at  once  and  sweetest  hope. 

Many  have  found  fault  with  the  divine  action 
interwoven  through  the  epic,  and  it  cannot  be 
denied  that  Milton  has,  through  his  harsh  Puri- 
tanic anthropomorphism,  missed  the  higher  mys- 
teries of  divinity.  We  may  even  go  so  far 
with  Taine  as  to  admit  that  something  of  prim- 
ness, almost,  it  might  be  said,  of  priggishness, 
disfigures  the  celestial  household.  But  looked  at  in 
a  proper  light,  this  action  performs,  nevertheless,  a 


252  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

needed  ofl&ce.    The  creation  passages,  for  example, 
permit  the  poet,  as  if  in  anticipation  of  Lessing's 
Laocoon,  to  expand  his  pictorial  scenes  and  to  give 
them  vital  interest  by  throwing  his  descriptions 
into  the  form   of  consecutive  narration.     What 
would  be  intolerable  as  mere  descriptive  writing 
becomes  vivid  and  truly  poetical  when  we  see  the 
world  grow  into  form  and  all  its  beauties  one  by 
one  develop   beneath  the   Creator's  hand.     But 
more  than  this,  the  celestial  action  lends  to  the 
poem  the  desired  balance  of  art.    By  the  malignant 
plotting  of  the  demons,  who  in  their  evil  propensi- 
ties stand  for  a  personification  of  the  antithetic 
vices,  the  happy  reality  of  Eden  was  changed  to  a 
lingering  dream  of  memory.     The  counterpart  of 
that  demonic  senate  is  shown  in  the  councils  of 
heaven,  where  in  the  colloquy  of  the  Father  and 
the  Son  we  hsten  to  the  divine  love  whose  power 
and  wisdom,  so  the  poet  dreams,  shall  at  the  last 
restore  to  erring  mankind  the  lost  Paradise  made 
perfect  now  against  temptation  and  deceit.     So  is 
the  humble  tragedy  in  the  garden  of  Eden  lifted 
up  in  grandeur  and  significance  until  it  is  made 
to  embrace  the  drama    of  salvation;  and  so   the 
regret  of  memory  is  converted  into  the  gladness  of 
hope.     Meanwhile  for  us  who  merely  read   and 
seek   the   exalted  pleasures  of  the  imagination, 
there   lies    between    the  scenes  in  hell   and  the 
panoramic  vision  of  the  world's  shattered  life  that 
perfect  and  splendid  vision  of  pastoral  bliss.     As 
Adam  in  his  morning  hymn  gave  thanks  for  the 


THE    THEME    OF    PARADISE    LOST      253 

glories  of  the  outstretched  and  still  uncontami- 
nated  earth,  so  almost  we  are  ready  to  render 
praise  to  the  poet's  creative  genius  for  this  sweet 
refuge  of  retirement  he  has  builded  for  the  heart 
of  our  fancy. 


THE  LETTERS  OF  HORACE  WAI.POLE 

In  Jauuary  of  1797  Lord  Orford,  then  in  his 
eightieth  year  and  dying  of  the  gout,  but  staunch 
of  heart  and  clear  of  intellect  as  always,  closed  a 
letter  to  his  faithful  frieud  the  Countess  of  Upper 
Ossory  with  these  words — they  were,  so  far  as  we 
know,  the  last  he  ever  wrote  or  dictated:  "Oh, 
my  good  Madam,  dispense  with  me  from  such  a 
task,  and  think  how  it  must  add  to  it  to  apprehend 
such  letters  being  shown.  Pray  send  me  no  more 
such  laurels,  which  I  desire  no  more  than  their 
leaves  when  decked  with  a  scrap  of  tinsel  and 
stuck  on  twelfth-cakes  that  lie  on  the  shop-boards 
of  pastry-cooks  at  Christmas.  I  shall  be  quite 
content  with  a  sprig  of  rosemary  thrown  after  me, 
when  the  parson  of  the  parish  commits  my  dust 
to  dust.  Till  then,  pray,  Madam,  accept  the 
resignation  of  your  ancient  servant."  Walpole 
was  temperate  in  his  modesty,  as  in  everything 
else — except  scandal — and  knew  that  many  of  his 
letters  were  worth j'-  of  preservation;  he  even  went 
so  far  as  practically  to  prepare  those  to  Horace 
Mann  for  the  press  ;  yet  who  can  doubt  his  sur- 
prise, possibly  his  chagrin,  if  he  had  suspected 
the  care  that  curious  editors  were  to  bestow  on 
254 


HORACE    WALPOLE  255 

his  correspondence,  and,  in  particular,  if  he  had 
foreseen  this  latest  superb  edition  into  which 
every  attainable  bit  of  writing  has  been  pressed, 
not  without  much  learning  of  annotation  ?  '  Here 
is  rosemary  for  remembrance,  and  leaves  of  laurel 
with  a  vengeance.  I  confess  that  my  immediate 
thought  on  turning  over  the  last  page  was  the 
ungracious  wish  that  some  kind  editor  would  now 
condense  the  fifteen  volumes  to  four  or  five  by 
leaving  out  the  repetitions  and  the  purely  irrele- 
vant; and  in  such  a  wish  I  think  that  Walpole 
himself  would  have  been  the  first  to  concur. 
Indeed,  there  is  room  for  a  whole  library  of  the 
expansive  eighteenth-century  writers  so  abridged 
that  we  should  feel  we  were  getting  the  real  heart 
of  an  author  without  suffering  from  expurgations 
demanded  by  the  parlour  table  or  the  schoolroom. 
It  is  a  questionable  compliment  to  the  reader  to 
print,  as  Mrs.  Toynbee  does,  all  the  most  insignifi- 
cant scraps  of  correspondence  and  at  the  same 
time  to  suppress  more  vital  passages  here  and 
there,  which  might  offend  a  prudish  taste. 

And  yet,  if  it  came  to  that,  who  would  have  a 

'  The  Letters  of  Horace  Walpole,  Fourth  Earl  of 
Orford.  Chronologically  arranged  and  edited  with 
notes  and  indices  by  Mrs.  Paget  Toynbee.  In  sixteen 
volumes,  with  portraits  and  facsimiles.  New  York  :  The 
Oxford  University  Press,  1903-5. — The  whole  of  the  six- 
teenth volume  is  given  up  to  genealogical  tables  and 
indices,  which  form  not  the  least  valuable  part  of  the 
edition. 


256  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

shorter  edition  of  Walpole  at  the  cost  of  the 
larger?  For  me,  as  Tennysou  said,  "I  like  those 
great  still  books,"  and  could  even  desire  "there 
were  a  great  novel  in  hundreds  of  volumes  that  I 
might  go  on  and  on."  My  annoyance  was  due  to 
a  feeling  that  this  long  array  of  volumes  would 
deter  any  but  a  few  inveterate  bookmen  from 
opening  them,  and,  still  more  perhaps,  it  was  the 
critic's  dismay  at  the  diflSculty  of  reporting  in  a 
single  essay  any  adequate  impression  of  so 
prodigious  a  work.  Here  are  more  than  three 
thousand  letters,  extending  over  a  period  of  sixty- 
five  years  and  containing  pretty  much  all  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  A  whole  essay  might  be 
devoted  to  Walpole' s  relation  to  art ;  for  not  only 
was  he  a  distinguished  antiquary  and  the  author 
of  Anecdotes  of  Painting  in  England,  but  his 
"gingerbread  castle"  at  Twickenham  was  one  of 
the  principal  factors  in  the  revival  of  Gothic 
architecture,  a  museum  of  antiquities  to  which 
the  curious  flocked  in  such  numbers  as  almost  to 
drive  the  owner  out  of  his  home.  Still  more 
interesting  would  be  a  study  of  his  literary  taste. 
His  own  writing,  like  his  architecture,  helped  to 
introduce  the  mania  for  spurious  medisevalism; 
Chatterton's  genius  he  admired  warmly,  despite 
the  ill-treatment  he  received  from  the  crazy 
Chattertonians,  and  he  was  friendly  to  the  ballad 
poetry  of  Percy,  though  indifferent  to  the  antiqua- 
rian enthusiasms  of  Warton.  As  for  Macpherson, 
he  first  accepted   the   Ossianic  epics  as   full  of 


HORACE    WALPOLE  i>57 

shining  beauties,  and,  later,  led  by  his  flair  for 
rogues  and  angered  by  the  Scotchman's  sup- 
port of  lyord  North,  pronounced  them  "dull  for- 
geries," duller  than  Glover's  Leonidas.  On  the 
other  hand,  he  "reprobated"  Thomson,  while 
falling  into  rhapsodies  over  Dr.  Darwin's  wire- 
drawn imitations  of  Pope.  The  fact  is,  his  taste 
wavered  uncertainly  between  the  official  classical- 
ism  of  the  age  and  the  new  stirrings  of  romance, 
even  where  politics  did  not  intervene  to  warp  his 
judgment.  Johnson  he  never  mentions  otherwise 
than  with  contempt  and  aversion;  and  this  is  due 
in  part  to  the  Doctor's  coarse  habits  and  stilted 
language,  but  still  more  to  his  pugnacious  Tory- 
ism. Hannah  More  tells  of  wrangling  with 
Walpole  over  the  merits  of  Pope,  whom  she  pre- 
ferred to  his  favourite  Dryden,  and  here  again  we 
may  suspect  that  Walpole  is  guided  as  much  by 
his  uncompromising  hatred  of  the  Bolingbroke 
faction  as  by  his  taste  for  Dryden' s  larger,  freer 
style.  To  unravel  his  opinions  would  be  to  track 
the  whole  shifting  literary  movement  of  the  age. 
A  highly  diverting  theme  for  the  critic,  no 
doubt,  but  no  sooner  should  he  become  engaged 
upon  it  than  he  would  find  himself  entangled  in  a 
vast  spider-web  of  politics  and  part5^  It  has,  in 
fact,  been  well  said,  that  "the  history  of  England, 
throughout  a  very  large  segment  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  is  simply  a  synonym  for  the  works  of 
Horace  Walpole."  For  finished  portraits  after 
the  manner  of  Clarendon  and  Burnet,  or  perhaps 

17 


258  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

more  consciously  in  the  school  of  the  French 
moralists,  one  may  turn  to  his  memoirs  of  King 
George  the  Second  and  Third.  There  is  nothing 
better  in  that  kind  in  English  than  the  vignettes, 
etched  in  aqua-fortis,  of  Chesterfield,  Granville, 
Pelham,  and  his  brother,  the  Duke  of  Newcastle, 
to  name  the  first  that  come  to  mind.  It  is  an  art, 
altogether  precious,  that  was  lost  in  the  early 
nineteenth  century  with  the  blunting  of  our  sense 
of  personality,  and  has  never  been  regained.  But 
to  follow  the  political  drama  of  those  years  with 
all  the  vivacity  of  immediate  impression  one  must 
go  to  the  letters  themselves. 

The  first  act  is  that  incomparable  daily  record 
of  Sir  Robert  "Wal pole's  death-struggle  with  his 
enemies —  c^i  S'  ore  nanpiov  a}j.(pi: 

So  fares  a  boar  whom  all  the  troop  surrounds 
Of  shouting  huntsmen  and  of  clamorous  hounds. 

Then  comes  the  long  reign  of  the  Pelhams  with 
their  endless  intrigues  and  tergiversations,  sym- 
bolised by  the  pathetic  hands  of  Newcastle  ; 
"those  hands,"  as  Walpole  pictures  them,  "that 
are  always  groping  and  sprawling,  and  fluttering, 
and  hurrying  on  the  rest  of  his  precipitate 
person — but  there  is  no  describing  them  but  as 
Monsieur  Courcelle,  a  French  prisoner,  did  t'other 
day:  'Je  ne  sais  pas,'  dit  il,  'je  ne  saurais  1' ex- 
primer,  mais  il  y  a  un  certain  tatillonnage.'  If  one 
could  conceive  a  dead  body  hung  in  chains, 
always  wanting  to  be  hung  somewhere  else,  one 


HORACE    WALPOLE  259 

should  have  a  comparative  idea  of  him."  Mean- 
while, a  more  impenetrable  actor,  Chatham,  is 
playing  with  the  map  of  the  world,  as  he  plays 
with  his  gout — at  once  statesman  and  mounte- 
bank. Bute,  Grafton,  and  L,ord  North  pass  over 
the  stage;  while  behind  the  scenes  we  catch 
glimpses  of  the  sullen  figure  of  George  the  Third 
pulling  the  wires  and  causing  the  puppets  to 
speak,  hear  the  shrill  scolding  of  Junius  from  his 
hiding-place  in  the  gallery,  and  tremble  at  the  up- 
roar of  Wilkes  and  his  mob  in  the  pit;  the  Rock- 
inghams  and  Shelburnes  spin  for  a  few  hours  in 
view — Whig  within  Whig  like  the  wheels  of 
Ezekiel's  Cherubim. 

Some  of  the  scenes  in  this  long-protracted 
drama  can  scarcely  be  matched  outside  of  Tacitus 
or  Saint-Simon.  Most  memorable  of  all,  perhaps, 
is  the  ceremony  at  the  interment  of  George  II., 
with  its  grotesque  shufiQings  of  comedy  and 
tragedy.  We  enter  the  solemn  theatre  of  the 
Abbey,  and  behold  about  the  corpse  the  irreverent 
mummers, — Archbishop  Seeker,  who  had  been  so 
eager  to  be  near  the  new  king  before  the  old  was 
yet  buried  that  he  trod  on  the  Duke  of  Cumber- 
land's foot  ;  Cumberland  himself,  the  "  butcher 
Duke,"  uncle  of  the  new  king,  and  Newcastle, 
with  their  dark  plottings  and  smouldering 
hostility  over  the  regency.  Walpole  is  fully  con- 
scious of  all  the  human  passions  and  vanities 
involved  in  the  spectacle: 

The  procession  through  a  line  of  foot-guards,  every 


260  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

seventh  man  bearing  a  torcli,  the  horse-guards  lining  the 
outside,  their  officers  with  drawn  sabres  and  crape  sashes 
on  horseback,  the  drums  muffled,  the  fifes,  bells  tolling, 
and  minute  guns,  all  this  was  very  solemn.  But  the 
charm  was  the  entrance  of  the  Abbey,  where  we  were  re- 
ceived by  the  Dean  and  Chapter  in  rich  copes,  the  choir 
and  almsmen  all  bearing  torches;  the  whole  Abbey  so 
illuminated,  that  one  saw  it  to  greater  advantage  than  by 
day ;  the  tombs,  long  aisles,  and  fretted  roof,  all  appear- 
ing distinctly,  and  with  the  happiest  chiaroscuro.  .  .  . 
When  we  came  to  the  chapel  of  Henry  the  Seventh,  all 
solemnity  and  decorum  ceased — no  order  was  observed, 
people  set  or  stood  where  they  could  or  would,  the  yeo- 
men of  the  guard  were  crying  out  for  help,  oppressed  by 
the  immense  weight  of  the  coffin,  the  Bishop  read  sadly, 
and  blundered  in  the  prayers  the  fine  chapter,  Man  that 
is  borr^  of  a  woman,  was  chanted,  not  read,  and  the 
anthem,  besides  being  unmeasurably  tedious,  would  have 
served  as  well  for  a  nuptial.  The  real  serious  part  was 
the  figure  of  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  heightened  by  a 
thousand  melancholy  circumstances.  He  had  a  dark 
brown  adonis  [wig],  and  a  cloak  of  black  cloth,  with  a 
train  of  five  yards.  Attending  the  funeral  of  a  father, 
how  little  reason  so  ever  he  had  to  love  him,  could  not 
be  pleasant.  His  leg  extremely  bad,  yet  forced  to  stand 
upon  it  near  two  hours,  his  face  bloated  and  distorted 
with  his  late  paralytic  stroke,  which  has  affected,  too, 
one  of  his  eyes,  and  placed  over  the  mouth  of  the  vault, 
into  which,  in  all  probability,  he  must  himself  so  soon 
descend — think  how  unpleasant  a  situation!  He  bore 
it  all  with  a  firm  and  unaffected  countenance.  This  grave 
scene  was  fully  contrasted  by  the  burlesque  Duke  of 
Newcastle.  He  fell  into  a  fit  of  crying  the  moment  he 
came  into  the  chapel,  and  flung  himself  back  in  a  stall, 
the  Archbishop  hovering  over  him  with  a  smelling-bottle 
— but  in  two  minutes  his  curiosity  got  the  better  of  his 


HORACE    WALPOLE  26l 

hypocrisy,  and  he  ran  about  the  chapel  with  his  glass  to 
spy  who  was  or  was  not  there,  spying  with  one  hand,  and 
mopping  his  eyes  with  t'  other.  Then  returned  the  fear 
of  catching  cold,  and  the  Duke  of  Cumberland,  who  was 
sinking  with  heat,  felt  himself  weighed  down,  and  turn- 
ing round,  found  it  was  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  standing 
upon  his  train  to  avoid  the  chill  of  the  marble.  It  was 
very  theatric  to  look  down  into  the  vault,  where  the 
coflBn  lay,  attended  by  mourners  with  lights. 

And  this  is  the  making  of  history!  It  would  be 
interesting  to  compare  the  tragic  pathos  of  such  a 
letter  with  the  sham  terror  of  the  same  writer's 
Castle  of  Otranto. 

The  weakest  part  of  Walpole's  narrative  is  that 
which  touches  on  the  great  movements  outside  of 
Parliamentary  passions.  If  anywhere  he  may  be 
called  tedious,  it  is  in  the  letters  that  pour  out  his 
prolonged  wail  over  the  wanton  alienation  of  Amer- 
ica and  his  shrill  clamour  against  the  French  Rev- 
olution. His  heart  and  mind  were  right  in  both 
cases,  but  the  magnitude  of  the  events  shocked 
him  out  of  his  equilibrium  of  persiflage  and  left 
him  dull  and  emphatic  like  other  men.  They 
had  no  place  in  the  political  philosophy  which  he 
had  inherited  from  his  father;  for  a  philosophy  of 
the  simplest  and  most  consistent  sort  he  unques- 
tionably possessed,  the  belief  that  liberty  and  the 
British  constitution  are  one  and  inseparable,  and 
that  the  constitution  is  nothing  other  than  the 
balance  of  monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  democracy 
introduced  by  the  settlement  of  Eighty-eight. 
Such  a  theory  of  government  may  seem  both 


262  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

scholastic  and  superficial.  I  am  not  so  sure  of 
that.  At  least,  it  was  the  formula  of  Bolingbroke, 
the  working  system  of  Burke  and  many  of  the 
century's  wisest  statesmen.  Unfortunately,  it 
drops  into  a  tone  of  indolent  cynicism  when 
summed  up,  as  Walpole  was  fond  of  expressing 
it,  in  the  practical  maxim  of  his  father,  Quieta  non 
movere.  And  what  was  a  sensitive,  ease-loving 
gentleman,  holding  so  comfortable  a  philosophy, 
to  do  in  the  presence  of  a  world  that  was  develop- 
ing a  terrible  taste  for  mobs  and  revolutions  ? 
Move  not  what  is  quiet,  quotha;  alas,  he  was  met 
by  the  ancient,  stubborn  fact — e  pur  si  muove! 

But  these  violent  uprisings  come  in  toward  the 
end  of  Walpole's  correspondence,  and  during  all 
his  more  vigorous  years  he  was  witness  of  a 
stationary  government  where  sleeping  principles 
were  supplanted  by  parties,  and  parties  degener- 
ated into  pure  faction.  It  was  the  age  when  a 
despicable  trimmer  and  wriggler  like  Bubb 
Dodington  could  write  out  the  story  of  his  double- 
dealings  as  an  apologia  for  his  life  ;  but  it  was  the 
age  also  of  Dr.  Johnson,  an  era  of  liberated  per- 
sonalities, great  and  small,  cunning  and  fatuous, 
wise  and  obtuse — but  always  interesting,  as  per- 
sonality is,  after  all,  the  one  thing  of  permanent, 
unchanging,  universal  concern.  History  at  such  a 
time  naturally  becomes  a  satirical  study  of  society^ 
and  the  value  of  Walpole's  letters,  especially 
those  of  the  earlier  volumes,  is  due  chiefly  to  the 
causticity  of  a  wit  that  could  etch  a  variety  of 


HORACE    WALrOLE  263 

characters  and  their  milieu  in  strong,  lasting  lines. 
Altogether  they  form  a  social  picture  v/hose  mi- 
nuteness and  realism  no  other  English  writer  has 
equalled.  In  some  respects  the  impression  left 
by  the  whole  period  is  not  unlike  that  of  the 
middle  sixteenth  century.  The  great  passions 
that  had  been  generated  by  political  and  religious 
upheaval  lingered  on,  but,  being  deprived  of  their 
normal  sustenance,  worked  themselves  out  in  mon- 
strous idiosyncrasies  of  character,  which  gradu- 
ally subside  into  whims  of  an  ever  milder  temper. 
In  both  ages  the  imagination,  feeling  the  want  of 
restraint,  imported  a  model  of  poetic  regularity 
from  abroad  and  then,  at  the  end,  rebounded  into 
an  excessive  romanticism.  Surrey  and  Wyatt  are 
as  close  a  parallel  to  the  school  of  Pope  as  Spenser 
and  Sidney  are  to  the  school  of  Shelley.  Such 
comparisons,  however,  are  admittedly  as  danger- 
ous as  they  are  seductive,  and  the  court  of  George 
the  Second  was,  it  need  scarcely  be  said,  very  far 
from  a  replica  of  Edward  the  Sixth's. 

It  is  safer  to  consider  these  liberated  passions 
as  an  exaggerated  illustration  of  traits  that  have 
always  prevailed  more  or  less  in  English  society 
and  literature.  ' '  Why  was  he  sent  into  England? ' ' 
inquires  Hamlet ;  and  the  Clown  replies  with  a 
turn  that  must  have  made  the  groundlings  roar  : 
"Why,  because  a'  was  mad:  a'  shall  recover  his 
wits  there ;  or,  if  a'  do  not,  't  is  no  great  matter 
there.  'T  will  not  be  seen  in  him  there  ;  there 
the  men  are  as  mad  as  he, ' '     It  reminds  one  of  the 


264  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

reflection  that  is  constantly  on  Walpole's  lips. 
He  is  struck  by  it  during  his  first  tour  on  the 
Continent.  "The  most  remarkable  thing  I  have 
observed  since  I  came  abroad,"  he  writes  from 
Florence,  "is  that  there  are  no  people  so  obviously 
mad  as  the  English.  The  French,  the  Italians, 
have  great  follies,  great  faults ;  but  then  they  are 
so  national  that  they  cease  to  be  striking.  In 
England,  tempers  vary  so  excessively,  that  almost 
every  one's  faults  are  peculiar  to  himself.  I  take 
this  diversity  to  proceed  partly  from  our  climate, 
partly  from  our  Government:  the  first  is  change- 
able and  makes  us  queer;  the  latter  permits  our 
queernesses  to  operate  as  they  please."  And  a 
few  years  later,  in  London,  he  introduces  the 
extraordinary  story  of  Lord  Ferrers  with  the  epi- 
gram: "Madness,  that  in  other  countries  is  a  dis- 
order, is  here  a  systematic  character."  He  never, 
I  believe,  connects  this  theory  with  Shakespeare's 
sapient  grave-digger;  it  springs  from  his  own 
observation,  is  his  own  way  of  saying  what  the 
wits  of  Queen  Anne  before  him  had  accepted  as  a 
philosophy  of  life.  Pope  had  used  the  "ruling 
passion  strong  in  death"  to  point  his  panegyric 
as  well  as  his  satire: 

The  ruling  Passion,  be  it  what  it  -will. 
The  ruling  Passion  conquers  Reason  still. 

And  Prior  had  turned  it  to  a  mock-heroic  theory 

oi Alma,  the  soul: 

We  sure  in  vain  the  Cards  condemn  : 
Our  selves  both  cut  and  shuffl'd  them. 


HORACE    WALPOLE  265 

In  vain  on  Fortune's  Aid  rely : 

She  only  is  a  Stander-by. 

Poor  Men !  poor  Papers !    We  and  They 

Do  some  impulsive  Force  obey ; 

And  are  but  play'd  with  ; — Do  not  play.     .     .     . 

Mark  then ; — Where  Fancy  or  Desire 

Collects  the  beams  of  Vital  Fire; 

Into  that  Limb  fair  Alma  slides, 

And  there,  pro  tempore,  resides. 

The  sotil  is  not,  as  the  men  of  Oxford  hold, 
diflfused  throughout  the  body,  nor  does  she,  as  the 
Cambridge  wits  contend,  sit  "cock-horse  on  her 
throne,  the  brain,"  but  is  all  contracted  into  this 
or  that  member,  from  toes  to  head,  as  some 
master  impulse  governs  the  man. 

Most  commonly,  the  ruling  passion  of  Walpole's 
characters  is  an  overweening,  undisciplined  im- 
periousness  of  will,  turned  in  upon  itself  and 
producing  an  egotism  which  only  increases  its 
insolence  at  the  approach  of  death,  "Old 
Marlborough  is  dying — but  who  can  tell!  last  year 
she  had  lain  a  great  while  ill,  without  speaking; 
her  physicians  said,  'She  must  be  blistered,  or 
she  will  die.'  She  called  out,  'I  won't  be 
blistered,  and  I  won't  die.'  "  And  in  truth  she 
defied  them  all  and  the  great  Physician,  too,  for 
four  years.'     Another  grande  dame,  the  Princess 

'Is  it  fanciful  to  compare  this  with  a  passage  in  the  last 
sermon  of  Latimer  preached  before  Edward  the  Sixth  ? 
— "For  a  certain  great  man,  that  had  purchased  much 
lands,  a  thousand  marks  by  year,  or  I  wot  not  what ;  a 
great  portion  he  had  :  and  so  on  the  way,  as  he  was  in  his 


266  GHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

of  Buckingham,  natural  daughter  of  James  II., 
makes  her  ladies  vow  that,  if  she  should  lie  sense- 
less, they  would  not  sit  down  in  the  room  before 
she  was  dead.  She  had  settled  the  ceremony  of 
her  funeral  and  had  applied  to  the  Duchess  of 
Marlborough  to  borrow  the  triumphal  car  that 
had  borne  the  Duke's  body.  "Old  Sarah,  as 
mad  and  proud  as  herself,  sent  her  word  that  it 
had  carried  my  Lord  Marlborough  and  should 
never  be  profaned  by  any  other  corpse.  The 
Buckingham  returned,  that  'she  had  spoken  to 
the  undertaker  and  he  had  engaged  to  make  a 
finer  for  twenty  pounds.'  "  But  pride  is  not  the 
only  passion;  avarice  and  stinginess  are  almost 
as  common.  Here  is  the  Duchess  of  Devonshire 
at  ' '  her  secular  assembly  which  she  keeps  once  in 

journey  towards  Loudon,  or  from  London,  he  fell  sick  by 
the  way  ;  a  disease  took  him,  that  he  was  constrained 
to  lie  upon  it.  And  so  being  in  his  bed,  the  disease 
grew  more  and  more  upon  him,  that  he  was,  by  his 
friends  that  were  about  him,  godly  advised  to  look  to 
himself,  and  to  make  him  ready  to  God  ;  for  there  was 
none  other  likelihood  but  that  he  must  die  without 
remedy.  He  cried  out,  '  What,  shall  I  die  ? '  quoth  he. 
'  Wounds !  sides  !  heart !  shall  I  die,  and  thus  go  from  my 
goods  ?  Go,  fetch  me  some  physician  that  may  save  my 
life.  Wounds  and  sides  !  shall  I  thus  die  ? '  There  lay  he 
still  in  his  bed  like  a  block,  with  nothing  but,  '  Wounds 
and  sides,  shall  I  die  ? '  Within  a  very  little  while  he 
died  indeed  ;  and  then  lay  he  like  a  block  indeed.  There 
was  black  gowns,  torches,  tapers,  and  ringing  ;  but  what 
is  become  of  him,  God  knoweth,  and  not  I." 


HORACE    WALPOLE  267 

fifty  years,"  "more  delightfully  vulgar  at  it  than 
you  can  imagine,"  complaining  of  the  dirty  shoes 
of  the  men,  and  calling  out  at  supper  to  the  Duke, 
"Good  God!  my  Lord,  don't  cut  the  ham,  nobody 
will  eat  any ! ' '  And  there  is  a  less  exalted  person 
who  sends  for  the  undertaker  before  his  daughter 
is  dead,  and  cheapens  the  coffin  on  the  plea  that 
she  may  recover.  Jealousy  takes  the  form  of  my 
Lord  Coventry,  who,  at  a  dinner  in  Paris,  chases 
his  wife,  one  of  the  rare  Miss  Gunnings,  about 
the  table,  seizes  her,  scrubs  the  rouge  off  her  face 
with  a  napkin,  and  swears  he  will  carry  her  back 
to  England, 

Parliament  is  the  great  stage,  where  these 
whims  and  frenzies  move  their  puppets  most 
visibly  to  the  world.  Take  a  scene  from  one  of 
the  letters  to  Sir  Horace  Mann,  at  Florence, 
written  during  the  frantic  efforts  of  the  Court 
party  to  keep  Wilkes  out  of  the  House  of  Com- 
mons on  the  ground  of  atheism.  One  Martin 
has  called  him  a  "cowardly  scoundrel,"  and  they 
go  off  to  Hyde  Park,  where  Wilkes  receives  a 
bullet  in  his  body.  Meanwhile,  on  the  same  day. 
Lord  Sandwich  produces  in  the  House  of  Lords 

a  poem,  called  an  Essay  on  Woman,  written  by  the  same 
Mr.  Wilkes,  though  others  say,  only  enlarged  by  him 
from  a  sketch  drawn  by  a  late  son  of  a  late  archbishop. 
It  is  a  parody  on  Pope's  Essay  on  Man;  and,  like  that, 
pretending  to  notes  by  Dr.  Warburton,  the  present  holy 
and  orthodox  Bishop  of  Gloucester  ["  blasphemous  "  and 
"scurrilous,"  he  calls  him  elsewhere].     It  is  dedicated 


268  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

to  Fanny  Murray,  whom  it  prefers  to  tlie  Virgin  Mary 
from  never  having  had  a  child  [we  know  this  Fanny 
Murray  from  another  letter.  Sir  Richard  Atkins  had 
once  given  her  a  twenty-pound  note;  "she  said,  'Damn 
your  twenty  pound,  what  does  that  signify?' — clapped  it 
between  two  pieces  of  bread  and  butter,  and  eat  it  "];  and 
it  calls  the  ass  a  noble  animal,  which  never  disgraced 
itself  but  once,  and  that  was  when  it  was  ridden  on  into 
Jerusalem.  You  may  judge  by  these  samples  of  the 
whole:  the  piece,  indeed,  was  only  printed,  and  only 
fourteen  copies,  but  never  published.  Mr.  Wilkes  com- 
plains that  he  never  read  it  but  to  two  persons,  who  both 
approved  it  highly,  Lord  Sandwich  and  Lord  Despeucer 
[leader  of  the  infamous  Hell  Fire  Club  of  sham  Francis- 
cans at  Medmenham  Abbey].  The  style,  to  be  sure,  is  at 
least  not  unlike  that  of  the  last.  The  wicked  even  afl&rm, 
that  very  lately,  at  a  club  with  Mr.  "Wilkes,  held  at  the 
top  of  the  playhouse  in  Drury  Lane,  Lord  Sandwich 
talked  so  profanely  that  he  drove  two  harlequins  out  of 
company.  You  will  allow,  however,  that  the  production 
of  this  poem  so  critically  was  masterly :  the  secret  too 
was  well  kept :  nor  till  a  vote  was  passed  against  it,  did 
even  Lord  Temple  suspect  who  was  the  author.  If  Mr. 
Martin  has  not  killed  him,  nor  should  we,  you  see  here 
are  faggots  enough  in  store  for  him  still.  The  Bishop  of 
Gloucester,  who  shudders  at  abuse  and  infidelity,  has 
been  measuring  out  ground  in  Smithfield  for  his  execu- 
tion ;  and  in  his  speech  begged  the  devil's  pardon  for 
comparing  him  to  Wilkes. 

And  Walpole  adds  his  comment  on  this  mad 
scene:  "  We  are  poor  pygmy,  short-lived  animals, 
but  we  are  comical — I  don't  think  the  curtain 
fallen  and  the  drama  closed." 

Not  only  history  but  the  very  seasons  of  the 


HORACE    WALPOLE  269 

year  and  the  weather  in  this  world  become  ex- 
pressed in  the  language  of  personalities.  Does 
winter  linger  beyond  his  date  ?  Walpole  will  tell 
you  there  is  "not  a  glimpse  of  spring  or  green, 
except  a  miserable  almond  tree,  half  opening  one 
bud,  like  my  Lord  Powerscourt's  eye."  Does  the 
Danish  minister  complain  of  the  heat  at  the  first 
levee  of  Lord  Bute,  the  incoming  favourite  ? 
George  Selwyn  is  there  to  whisper  in  his  ear: 
"Pour  se  mettre  au  froid,  il  faut  aller  chez 
Monsieur  le  Due  de  Newcastle."  It  is  this  same 
George  Selwyn  who  acts  throughout  as  a  kind  of 
licensed  jester  to  the  motley  crowd.  Ghastl}'  in 
a  very  literal  sense  is  much  of  his  wit,  seasoned 
with  his  own  ruling  passion  for  hangings  and 
similar  grewsome  scenes;  ghastly  in  a  more 
general  way  to  us,  like  other  faded  things  of  a 
past  age.  Already  long  before  he  had  left  the 
stage,  the  young  men  at  White's  were  laughing 
at  his  bons  viots  only  by  tradition,  so  Walpole 
laments;  and  to-day  that  laughter  has  grown  thin, 
thin  to  extinction  !  But  let  us  be  charitable. 
Much  may  be  forgiven  him  for  his  wish  to  see 
the  comedy  of  High  Life  Below  Stairs  at  Drury 
Lane,  being  weary  of  low  life  above  stairs. 

It  is  a  question  how  far  Walpole  distorts  the 
picture  of  this  original  society.  Some  heighten- 
ing of  the  colour  there  must  be;  certainly  one  may 
read  the  letters  of  the  pious  Mrs.  Montagu  during 
the  same  years  and  about  pretty  much  the  same 
people,  and   feel   one's  self  in  the  company   of 


270  SHELBURNE   ESSAYS 

insipid  saints.  My  opinion  is  that  Walpole  does 
not  use  exaggeration  so  much  as  selection;  he 
had  that  rare  artistic  vision  which  naturally 
interprets  life  in  accordance  with  its  own  impe- 
rious needs,  throwing  this  event  into  relief  and 
passing  by  that  so  as  to  group  the  whole  into  a 
rational  system.  Partly  this  was  the  instinctive 
operation  of  his  mind  working  in  a  congenial 
medium;  but  partly  also  it  was,  I  think,  the 
conscious  labour  of  the  born  author.  ' '  For  seven 
and  twenty  years,"  he  writes  to  Sir  Horace  Mann, 
"I  have  been  sending  you  the  annals  of  Bedlam"; 
he  knew  pretty  well  the  drift  of  these  letters  and 
what  picture  of  society  they  were  creating. 
Though  they  show  no  marks  of  having  been 
composed  with  a  public  audience  in  view,  they 
are  something  more  than  the  ordinary  clever 
correspondence;  they  are  literature,  just  because 
they  translate  the  jargon  of  events  into  the  lan- 
guage of  a  dominating,  constructive  idea. 

And  they  are  not  only  themselves  literature, 
but  they  are  a  prime  source  for  understanding  a 
large  tract  of  English  poetry  and  fiction.  From 
the  Elizabethan  days  to  the  Victorian,  humours,  in 
the  old  sense  of  the  word,  have  furnished  the 
British  writer  with  half  his  material.  Such 
themes,  of  course,  are  not  confined  or  even 
original  to  England — far  from  that;  but  they 
have  been  peculiarly  fruitful  there.  To  Ben 
Jonson  they  gave  both  the  light  laughter  of  Every 
Man  in  His  Humour  and  the  savage  indignation 


HORACE   WALPOLE  27 1 

of  Volpone;  he  developed  them  into  a  school  of 
art.  The  ruling  passion  of  the  Queen  Anne  wits 
is  nothing  more  than  these  same  humours  dipped 
in  gall  by  Dryden  for  the  purposes  of  satire. 
Without  them  Fielding  and  Smollett  would  be 
robbed  of  half  their  characters.  Sterne  tricks 
them  out  as  hobby-horses  and  sets  all  the  world 
astride  upon  them,  like  children  in  a  merry-go- 
round.  Dickens  repeoples  the  streets  of  London 
with  their  shadows,  and  Thackeray  himself 
borrows  them  at  will  in  their  purest  eighteenth- 
century  form.  He  need  not  have  gone  to  the 
Lord  Hertford  of  his  own  day  for  his  Marquis  of 
Steyne,  for  Walpole  would  have  served  him 
abundantl}'  with  models — the  old  Duke  of  Somer- 
set, for  instance,  waking  after  dinner  and  finding 
himself  on  the  floor,  and  cursing  his  daughter, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  watch  him,  to  a  year  of 
complete  silence.  Is  it  not  easy  to  imagine  the 
girl  wandering  about  the  gloomy  chambers  of 
Gaunt  House,  avoided  by  the  servants,  who  are 
forbidden  to  speak  to  her  yet  dare  not  show  her 
any  disrespect?  This  whole  letter  (to  Sir  Horace 
Mann,  dated  December  26,  1748)  might  almost 
pass  for  a  chapter  in  Vanity  Fair.  Indeed,  all 
these  invented  characters  of  poet  and  novelist 
assume  a  new  and  wonderful  colour  of  reality  when 
we  see  their  counterparts  walking  through  the 
actual  history  of  Walpole' s  world.  It  was  the 
crowning  virtue  of  his  wit  thus  to  transmute  life 
into  literature  and  literature  into  life. 


272  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

The  society  of  the  eighteenth-century  world  is 
sharply  enough,  perhaps  too  sharply,  drawn  in 
these  letters,  but  what  of  the  man  Horace  Walpole 
himself?  He  has  limned  for  us  a  whole  gallery  of 
characters  with  mordant  brush  ;  what  of  his  own 
portrait?  What  is  the  ruling  passion  that  impels 
him  to  play  his  part  in  this  drama  of  human 
nature  ?  "I  have  often  said,  and  oftener  think — ' ' 
and  the  maxim,  which  he  underscores,  is  his 
chief  legacy  to  popular  remembrance — ''that  this 
world  is  a  comedy  to  those  that  thi7ik,  a  tragedy  to 
those  thai  feel — a  solution  of  why  Democritus 
laughed  and  Heraclitus  wept.  The  only  gainer 
is  History,  which  has  constant  opportunities  of 
showing  the  various  ways  in  which  men  can 
contrive  to  be  fools  and  knaves.  The  record 
pretends  to  be  written  for  instruction,  though  to 
this  hour  no  mortal  has  been  the  better  or  wiser 
for  it."  Democritus  or  Heraclitus,  which  was 
he?  Not  precisely  either,  however  much  laughter 
may  have  predominated  over  tears.  To  the  pro- 
founder  thought  of  the  age,  whether  speculative 
or  political,  he  gave  little  heed  ;  was  indeed  ready 
on  all  occasions  to  admit  that  these  things  were 
outside  the  circle  of  his  sympathy  and  his  powers. 
Nor  can  he  be  classed  among  those  practical 
philosophers  who  hold  themselves  valiantly  aloof 
from  the  attractions  and  perplexities  of  the  day. 
Something  of  the  unconcerned  spectator  he 
possessed,  and  towards  the  end  of  life  this  quality 
developed  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others, 


HORACE    WALPOLE  273 

but  during  his  more  active  years  the  personal 
bonds  were  too  strong  to  allow  any  such  claim  to 
a  lofty  indifference.  To  his  father  he  preserved 
always  a  dog-like  fidelity,  and  his  theory  of 
government  was  at  once  a  form  of  almost  passion- 
ate pietas,  and  a  surrender  to  his  own  tempera- 
mental dislike  of  change.  Other  lesser  fidelities 
held  him,  and  he  could  enter  the  broil  of  faction 
or  even  tolerate  the  enormities  of  war  if  his  cousin 
Conway  were  involved. 

Life  could  not  be  quite  a  comedy  to  one  as  sen- 
sitive as  he,  yet  his  feelings  had  neither  the  quiv- 
ering tenderness  nor  the  austere  comprehension 
of  tragedy.  It  does  not  appear  that  the  pathos  of 
Richardson's  novels  touched  him  in  any  way  ;  the 
great  heart  of  Dr.  Johnson  could  be  deeply  stirred 
by  the  pity  of  Clarissa's  fall,  but  Walpole  only 
mocked.  No  sentiment  could  be  more  genuine 
than  his  detestation  of  war.  He  cries  out  over 
and  over  again  that  only  a  monster  could  have 
started  the  reforms  of  Luther,  had  he  foreseen 
their  cost  in  bloodshed  and  devastation.  Through 
all  the  conflicts  of  his  own  age,  one  feeling  is  con- 
stant with  him:  Quidquid  ddirant  reges  plec- 
tuntur  Achivi,  as  he  expresses  it  in  the  verse  of 
his  namesake — it  is  the  people  who  pay  for  this 
national  madness  with  their  lives  and  their  ruined 
homes.  I  see  no  reason  to  doubt  the  sincerity  of 
this  sentiment,  yet  one  will  look  in  vain  to  find  in 
it  any  vibration  of  that  sympathy  with  the  fates  of 
mankind  which  made  Rousseau,  despite  his  mor- 
18 


274  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

bidness  and  falseness,  so  terrible  a  force  for  good 
and  evil. 

His  thought  and  emotions  were  on  the  lower 
scale  of  the  dilettante,  and  tempered  with  the 
desire  of  ease.  It  is  to  this  quality  of  the 
dilettante  in  life  and  art  that  he  owes  the  almost 
malignant  perversion  of  his  character  which  the 
world  has  received  from  Macaulay ;  for  what 
sympathy  or  understanding  could  there  be 
between  so  militant  a  politician  and  one  whose 
Whigism  even,  as  Macaulay  says  with  infinite 
scorn,  "was  a  very  harmless  kind"?  But  Macau- 
lay is  more  than  unsympathetic ;  it  would  be  easy 
to  take  his  portrait  of  Walpole  point  by  point 
and  show  that  it  is  wantonly  or  ignorantly 
distorted.  "His  republicanism,"  says  the  histo- 
rian, "like  the  courage  of  a  bully,  or  the  love  of  a 
fribble,  was  strong  and  ardent  when  there  was  no 
occasion  for  it,  and  subsided  when  he  had  an 
opportunity  of  bringing  it  to  the  proof,"  etc. 
The  whole  passage  is  an  unpardonable  misrepre- 
sentation. Walpole  never  was,  properly  speak- 
ing, a  republican;  he  believed  thoroughly  in  the 
British  balance  of  powers,  the  constitution,  vSO- 
called.  He  never  wavered  in  his  sympathy  with 
the  Americans,  and  in  his  admiration  for  Wash- 
ington, believing  the  cause  of  liberty  lay  there; 
he  was  opposed  to  the  French  Revolution,  because 
he  thought  he  saw  in  it  a  new  and  more  terrible 
tyranny.  It  is  hard  to  see  in  this  the  part  of  a 
fribble.     "Though  the  most  Frenchified  English 


HORACE    WALPOLE  275 

writer  of  the  eighteenth  centurj',  he  troubled  him- 
self little  about  the  portents  which  were  daily  to  be 
discerned  in  the  French  literature  of  his  time. ' '  So 
writes  Macaulay,  doing  an  injustice  with  both 
turns  of  his  paradox.  The  fact  is  that  Walpole  is 
one  of  the  few  Englishmen  who  saw  clearly  that 
a  revolution  was  preparing  in  France,  and  was 
terrified  by  the  prospect.  And  as  for  being 
Frenchified  in  his  style  ("deeply  tainted  with 
Gallicism"),  the  only  Gallic  traits  one  reader  at 
least  can  observe,  apart  from  a  phrase  now  and 
then,  are  a  remarkable  lucidity  and  lightness;  he 
ranks  with  the  few  chosen  writers  of  England 
who  have  combined  the  precision  of  literary  with 
the  flexibility  of  spoken  language.  Macaulay 
sneers  again  at  his  "unwillingness  to  be  con- 
sidered a  man  of  letters,"  imputes  to  him  all  the 
vices  of  authorship  without  any  of  its  virtues,  and 
accuses  him  of  showing  a  lordly  contempt  for 
genius  while  longing  himself  for  literary  fame. 
"The  fact  is,  that  Walpole  had  the  faults  of  Grub 
Street,  with  a  large  addition  from  St.  James's 
Street,  the  vanity,  the  jealousy,  the  irritability 
of  a  man  of  letters,  the  afiected  superciliousness 
and  apathy  of  a  man  of  ton'' — it  is  a  pretty 
paradox  after  the  fashion  of  Macaulay,  and 
Walpole  himself  might  envy  such  a  gift  of  satire ; 
but  it  has  one  serious  defect — it  is  not  true.  The 
tenor  of  Walpole' s  letters  on  this  subject  is  suffi- 
ciently clear,  one  might  suppose.  Again  and 
again  he  deprecates  any  comparison  of  his  own 


276  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

writings  witli  the  work  of  real  genius,  not  because 
he  despises  the  trade  of  author,  but  because  he  is 
aware  of  his  own  limitations.  There  is,  in  parti- 
cular, a  passage  in  a  letter  written  late  in  life  to 
Hannah  More,  which  sets  his  self-criticism  in  so 
clear  a  light  that  it  may  be  quoted  at  length: 

You  said  in  your  last  that  you  feared  you  took  up 
time  of  mine  to  the  prejudice  of  the  public;  implying,  I 
imagined,  that  I  might  employ  it  in  composing.  Wai^- 
ing  both  your  compliment  and  my  own  vanity,  I  will 
speak  very  seriously  to  you  on  the  subject,  and  with 
exact  truth.  My  simple  writings  have  had  better  for- 
tune than  they  had  any  right  to  expect;  and  I  fairly 
believe,  in  a  great  degree,  because  gentlemen  writers, 
who  do  not  write  for  interest,  are  treated  with  some 
civility  if  they  do  not  write  absolute  nonsense.  I  think 
so,  because  I  have  not  unfrequently  known  much  better 
works  than  mine  much  more  neglected,  if  the  name,  for- 
tune, and  situation  of  the  authors  were  below  mine.  I 
wrote  early  from  youth,  spirits,  and  vanity ;  and  from 
both  the  last  when  the  first  no  longer  existed.  I  now 
shudder  when  I  reflect  on  my  own  boldness;  and  with 
mortification,  when  I  compare  my  own  writings  with 
those  of  any  great  authors.  This  is  so  true,  that  I  ques- 
tion whether  it  would  be  possible  for  me  to  summon  up 
courage  to  publish  anything  I  have  written,  if  I  could 
recall  time  past,  and  should  yet  think  as  I  think  at  pre- 
sent. So  much  for  what  is  over  and  out  of  my  power. 
As  to  writing  now,  I  have  totally  forsworn  the  profes- 
sion, for  two  solid  reasons.  One  I  have  already  told 
you;  and  it  is,  that  I  know  my  own  writings  are  trifling 
and  of  no  depth.  The  other  is,  that,  light  and  futile  as 
they  were,  I  am  sensible  they  are  better  than  I  could 
compose  now.  I  am  aware  of  the  decay  of  the  middling 
parts  I  had,  and  others  may  be  still  more  sensible  of  it. 


HORACE    WALPOLE  2/7 

I  doubt  if  Macaulay,  with  all  his  memory,  could 
summon  a  single  author  who  has  showed  a  more 
wholesome  understanding  of  his  own  performance, 
and  has  spoken  of  himself  with  a  finer  balance  of 
modesty  and  pride.  It  is  one  of  the  curious 
anomalies  of  psychology  that  Macaulay  should 
have  written  of  the  most  transparent  of  men,  both 
in  his  vanities  and  his  excellence,  as  bearing 
features  "covered  by  mask  within  mask." 

One  is  justified,  I  think,  in  feeling  something 
akin  to  indignation  at  these  perverted  charges. 
For  my  own  part,  I  confess  to  a  certain  invincible 
prepossession  in  favour  of  these  men  of  the  past 
who  have  lived  and  written  for  my  entertainment. 
There  are  writers  who  naturally  arouse  one's  im- 
patience— a  Tolstoy,  himself  a  compound  of  the 
humanitarian  and  the  decadent,  who  cries  out 
the  Gospel  of  Jesus  on  the  street-corners,  a  Brown- 
ing who  imposes  on  the  world  as  a  spiritual 
teacher,  a  Swinburne  who  mouths  the  great  words 
of  liberty  and  righteousness.  Such  men  challenge 
us  to  take  a  stand  on  questions  of  fundamental 
veracity.  But  to  those  authors  who  have  added 
so  generously  to  our  amusement  without  claiming 
our  reverence — a  sentimental  humourist  like 
Sterne,  a  babbling  man  of  the  world  like  Wal- 
pole — I  do  not  see  why  we  should  feel  anything 
but  indulgence.  It  does  not  enlarge  one's  idea  of 
Wordsworth's  humanity  to  read  such  words  as 
"That  cold  and  false-hearted  Frenchified  cox- 
comb, Horace  Walpole."     Let  alone  the  want  of 


2  78  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

charity  in  such  a  judgment,  cold  would  seem  to 
be  an  odd  epithet  to  apply  to  a  nature  so  quick 
with  sensibility,  and  false-hearted  is  equally 
foreign  to  one  who  made  a  cult  of  friendship, 
however  volatile  he  may  have  appeared  at  times. 

But  because  we  find  Walpole  engaging  and  at 
bottom  sincere,  it  is  not  necessary  to  exaggerate 
his  virtues  or  to  raise  him  into  a  hero ;  he  is  in 
no  possible  sense  ultimus  Romanorum,  as  Byron 
called  him,  but  very  human  and  very  crotchety. 
We  may  even  go  part  way  with  Macaulay.  "The 
conformation  of  his  mind,"  says  that  historian, 
"was  such  that  whatever  was  little  seemed  to  him 
great,  and  whatever  was  great  seemed  to  him 
little."  No  doubt,  something  of  this  dispropor- 
tion is  almost  an  essential  ingredient  of  the 
dilettante  wherever  and  whenever  found,  but  in 
Walpole  it  was  intensified  by  a  certain  limitation, 
and  I  think,  too,  honesty  of  temperament.  He 
apparently  sufiFered  a  kind  of  dread  not  only 
of  the  forces  which  might  solicit  his  heart  too 
eagerly,  but  of  those  also  which  disarranged  the 
settled  bounds  of  his  imagination.  His  disposition 
to  the  few  who  were  really  close  to  him  was 
considerate  and  generous ;  his  interest  in  every 
topic  within  a  certain  circumscribed  sphere  was 
insatiable.  These  things  he  magnified  with 
whimsical  delight;  here  he  was  at  home  to  quar- 
rel and  embrace  at  his  comfort.  But  the  great 
matters  of  the  outside — popular  movements,  hero- 
isms,  new  philosophies,    discoveries   of  science 


HORACE    WALPOLE  279 

which  appealed  to  the  deeper  springs  of  pity  and 
admiration — all  these  disturbed  him  with  a  sense 
of  homelessness,  and  no  one  can  fully  understand 
him  who  has  not  in  some  corner  of  his  own  nature 
this  jealous  love  of  the  small  and  the  familiar. 
The  distant  conquests  of  Great  Britain  under 
Chatham's  administration  stirred  his  patriotic 
pride,  but  they  undeniably  also  gave  him  a  feel- 
ing of  uneasiness,  as  if  the  peculiar  traits  of  the 
little  England  over  which  he  grumbled  so  com- 
fortably were  disappearing  in  the  unloved  concerns 
of  the  empire.  And  so  of  the  universe  at  large; 
he  protests  with  humourous  dismay  against  the 
discoveries  of  Herschell.  No,  he  has  not  visited 
the  gentleman's  giant  telescope.  "In  truth,"  he 
writes,  "the  scraps  I  havelearntof  his  discoveries 
have  confounded  me;  my  little  head  will  not  con- 
tain the  stupendous  idea  of  an  infinity  of  worlds." 
And  then,  after  other  matters,  he  takes  up  this 
astronomical  theme  again,  and  passes  from  it  to 
his  distaste  for  a  giant  picture: 

I  will  return  to  j'our  letter ;  whicli  set  me  afloat  on  the 
vasty  deep  of  speculation,  to  whicli  I  am  very  unequal 
and  do  not  love.  My  understanding  is  more  on  a  level 
with  your  ball  and  meditations  on  the  destruction  of 
Gorhamburj',  which  I  regret.  .  .  .  I  called  at  Sir  Joshua's, 
while  he  was  at  Ampthill,  and  saw  his  Hercules  for 
Russia.  I  did  not  at  all  admire  it:  the  principal  babe 
put  me  in  mind  of  what  I  read  so  often,  but  have  never 
seen,  the  monstrous  craws.  Master  Hercules's  knees  are 
as  large  as,  I  presume,  the  late  Lady  Guilford's.  Blind 
Tiresias  is  staring  with  horror  at  the  terrible  spectacle. 


28o  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

You  begin  to  see  that  this  apparent  trifler  has 
his  own  philosophy  of  life,  which  you  may  like  or 
not,  as  you  please.  "I  am  certainly  the  greatest 
philosopher  in  the  world,"  he  remarks  quizzi- 
cally, "  without  ever  having  thought  of  being  so  ; 
always  employed,  and  never  busy;  eager  about 
trifles,  and  indififerent  to  everything  serious. 
Well,  if  it  is  not  philosophy,  at  least  it  is  content. 
I  am  as  pleased  here  with  my  own  nutshell,  as 
any  monarch  you  have  seen  these  two  months 
astride  his  eagle."  It  is  the  philosophy  least  in 
vogue  to-day,  and  for  which  in  public  we  have 
the  least  charity,  yet  I  suspect  that  in  secret  it 
has  its  own  strange  seduction  for  many  a  bewil- 
dered soul.  Intellectually  there  comes  a  time 
when,  with  Walpole,  we  are  ready  to  pardon 
professed  philosophers  if  they  would  allow  that 
their  wisdom  is  only  trifling,  instead  of  calling 
their  trifling  wisdom.  And,  morally,  we  have 
our  moments  when  we  feel  it  is  idle  to  try  to  cure 
the  follies  of  the  world  without  curing  it  of  being 
foolish.  The  range  of  such  a  mood  passes  from  a 
lofty  Platonic  scorn  to  a  very  Epicurean  comfort 
of  scolding,  and  Walpole  may  be  found  at  both 
extremes.  I  doubt  if  Plato  was  one  of  the  authors 
who  stood  on  the  shelves  at  Strawberry  Hill,  yet 
during  the  height  of  the  American  war  Walpole 
breaks  out  in  a  spirit  of  invective  which  reads 
almost  like  a  translation  of  a  most  famous  passage 
in  the  Republic: 

There  are  great  moments,  lie  exclaims,  when  every 


HORACE    WALPOLE  28 1 

man  is  called  on  to  exert  himself;  but  when  folly,  in- 
fatuation, delusion,  incapacity,  and  profligacy  fling  a 
nation  away,  and  it  concurs  itself,  and  applauds  its  de- 
stroyers, a  man  who  has  lent  no  hand  to  the  mischief, 
and  can  neither  prevent  nor  remedy  the  mass  of  evils,  is 
fully  justified  in  sitting  aloof  and  beholding  the  tempest 
rage,  with  silent  scorn  and  indignant  compassion. 

Add  but  a  touch  of  urbanity,  and  you  have 
the  very  note  and  almost  the  words  of  Plato's 
image  of  the  storm  of  sleet  and  dust.  But  we  do 
not  go  to  Walpole  for  these  heights  of  indignation. 
He  is  more  at  ease  when  diverting  himself  at  the 
drolleries  of  society,  and  if  at  times  the  tone  rises, 
it  is  oftener  into  that  of  scandal  than  of  invective. 
Yes,  the  name  is  in  rather  bad  odour,  but  one  may 
as  well  admit  that  a  good  many  of  these  letters 
deal  in  pure  scandal.  If  Walpole  possessed  any 
ruling  passion,  it  was  quite  as  much  the  desire  to 
discover  the  skeleton  in  his  neighbour's  closet  as 
to  fill  his  own  closet  with  bric-^-brac.  And  he 
found  what  he  sought;  there  is  such  a  rattling 
through  these  pages  that  one  feels  occasionally 
like  a  modern  Ezekiel  strayed  into  the  valley  of 
dry  bones.  This  does  not  imply  necessarily,  I 
think,  that  the  observer's  heart  was  corrupt  or 
peevish.  There  is  no  more  terrible  picture  in  all 
the  correspondence  than  Walpole' s  visit  to  his 
mad  nephew,  the  third  Lord  Orford  whom  he 
afterwards  succeeded: 

The  gentlemen  of  the  country  came  to  congratulate  his 
recovery;  yet,  for  more  than  six  weeks,  he  would  do 


282  SHELBURNE    ESSAYS 

nothing  but  speak  in  the  lowest  voice,  and  would  whisper 
to  them  at  the  length  of  the  table,  when  the  person  next 
to  him  could  not  distinguish  what  he  said.  Every  even- 
ing, precisely  at  the  same  hour,  sitting  round  a  table,  he 
would  join  his  forehead  to  his  mistress's  (who  is  forty, 
red-faced,  and  with  black  teeth,  and  with  whom  he  has 
slept  every  night  these  twenty  years),  and  there  they 
would  sit  for  a  quarter  of  an  hour,  like  two  paroquets, 
without  speaking.  Every  night,  from  seven  to  nine,  he 
regularly,  for  the  whole  fortnight,  made  his  secretary  of 
militia,  an  old  drunken,  broken  tradesman,  read  Statins 
to  the  whole  company,  though  the  man  could  not  hiccup 
the  right  quantity  of  the  syllables.  Imagine  what  I 
suffered !  One  morning  I  asked  the  company  before  my 
Lord  was  up,  how  they  found  him?  They  answered, 
just  as  he  had  always  been.  Then,  thought  I,  he  has 
always  been  distracted. 

The  portraiture  is  sufficiently  cynical,  the  very 
"flower  of  brimstone,"  yet  we  must  remember 
that  Walpole  through  the  most  trying  circum- 
stances had  treated  this  poor  wretch  with  punctil- 
ious honour  and  even  consideration.  Here  is  one  of 
the  anomalies  of  our  nature:  who  will  allow  that 
he  takes  pleasure  in  plain  scandal,  yet  who  does 
not  relish  these  letters  ?  It  is,  in  fact,  curious  that 
those  who  have  criticised  Walpole  most  severely, 
admit  almost  in  the  same  breath  the  amusing 
qualities  of  his  writing.  Is  the  explanation  the 
old  one  of  the  French  moralist,  that  there  is  a 
certain  consolation  in  watching  the  misfortunes  of 
others,  even  of  a  friend  ?  or  is  it  possible  to  take  a 
more  moral  view  of  this  very  human  trait  ?  Some- 
times, while  laughing  at  these  malicious  stories 


HORACE    WALPOLE  283 

of  old  London,  an  odd  sensation  comes  over  the 
reader  that  he  is  not  one  but  two  persons,  and 
that  the  jest  is  on  himself.  All  the  brute  in  his 
own  nature,  the  disgraces  and  follies,  the  coarse 
and  evil  things  he  cannot  entirely  keep  out  of 
sight,  are  set  apart  from  himself  in  that  wicked 
societ}'',  and  in  the  wild  hilaritj'-  of  his  freedom  he  is 
pelting  the  monster  with  jeers  and  opprobrium. 
So  it  is  that  we  flatter  ourselves,  as  did  Walpole 
in  his  day,  by  making  of  scandal  a  kind  of 
philosophy  of  life. 


THE  END 


By 

ARTHUR  C.  BENSON  ("T.  B.") 
(Fourth  Impression) 

From  a  College  Window 

A  collection  of  essays  in  which  the  reader 
is  brought  under  the  spell  of  a  singularly 
interesting  and  attractive  personality.  The 
book  is  a  frank  outpouring  of  the  author's 
intimate  thoughts,  a  frank  expression  of 
what  he  prizes  in  life  and  what  he  expects 
from  life.  Mr.  Benson's  papers  are  character- 
ized by  the  intimacy  of  self-revelation  and 
allusiveness  and  sense  of  overflow  that 
belong  to  the  familiar  essay  at  its  best 

"  Mr.  Benson  has  written  nothing  equal  to  this  mellow  and 
full-flavored  book.  From  cover  to  cover  it  is  packed  with  per- 
sonality; from  phrase  to  phrase  it  reveals  a  thoroughly  sincere 
and  unaffected  effort  of  self-expression;  full-orbed  and  four- 
square, it  is  a  piece  of  true  and  simple  literature." 

London  Chronicle, 

(Sixth  Impression) 

The  Upton  Letters 

"A  piece  of  real  literature  of  the  highest  order,  beautiful  and 
fragrant.  To  review  the  hook  adequately  is  impossible.  .  .  . 
It  is  in  truth  a  precious  thing." —  Week's  Survey. 

"A  book  that  we  have  read  and  reread  if  only  for  the  sake  of 
its  delicious  flavor.  There  has  been  nothing  so  good  of  its 
kind  since  the  Etchingham  Letters.  The  letters  are  beautiful, 
quiet,  and  wise,  dealing  with  deep  things  in  a  dignified  way." 

Christian  Register. 
Crown  8vo.  Each,  Si. 25  net. 

Q.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

New  York  London 


Shelburne  Essays 

By  Paul  Elmer  More 

4  vofs.     Crown  octavo. 
'  Sold  separately.     Net,  $1.25.     (By  mail,  $1.35) 

Contents 

First  Series  :  A  Hermit's  Notes  on  Thoreau— The  Soli- 
tude of  Nathaniel  Hawthorne— The  Origins  of  Haw- 
thorne and  Poe— The  Influence  of  Emerson— The  Spirit 
of  Carlyle  —  The  Science  of  English  Verse  —  Arthur 
Symonds:  The  Two  Illusions— The  Epic  of  Ireland — 
Two  Poets  of  the  Irish  Movement— Tolstoy ;  or.  The 
Ancient  Feud  between  Philosophy  and  Art — The  Re» 
ligious  Ground  of  Humanitarianism. 

Second  Series  :  Elizabethan  Sonnets— Shakespeare's  Son- 
nets— Lafcadio  Hearn — The  First  Complete  Edition  of 
Hazlitt  —  Charles  Lamb  —  Kipling  and  FitzGerald  — • 
George  Crabbe  —  The  Novels  of  George  Meredith- 
Hawthorne  :  Looking  before  and  after  —  Delphi  and 
Greek  Literature — Nemesis  ;  or,  The  Divine  Envy. 

Third  Series  :  The  Correspondence  of  William  Cowper-» 
Whittier  the  Poet— The  Centenary  of  Sainte-Beuve — 
The  Scotch  Novels  and  Scotch  History — Swinburne — 
Christina  Rossetti — Why  is  Browning  Popular  ? — A  Note 
on  Byron's  "Don  Juan" — Laurence  Sterne — ^J.  Heniy 
Shorthouse — The  Quest. 

Fourth  Series  :  The  Vicar  of  Morwenstow— Fanny  Bur- 
ney— A  Note  on  "  Daddy"  Crisp— George  Herbert— John 
Keats— Benjamin  Franklin— Charles  Lamb  Again— Walt 
Whitman— William  Blake— The  Letters  of  Horace  Wal- 
pole— The  Theme  of  Paradise  Lost. 


A  Few  Press  Criticisms  on 
Shelburne  Essays 

"  It  is  a  pleasure  to  hail  in  Mr.  More  a  genuine  critic,  for 
genuine  critics  in  America  in  these  days  are  uncommonly 
scarce.  .  .  .  We  recommend,  as  a  sample  of  his  breadth, 
style,  acumen,  and  power  the  essay  on  Tolstoy  in  the  present 
volume.  That  represents  criticism  that  has  not  merely 
a  metropolitan  but  a  world  note.  .  .  .  One  is  thoroughly 
grateful  to  Mr.  More  for  the  high  quality  of  his  thought,  his 
serious  purpose,  and  his  excellent  style." — Harvard  Gradu- 
ates^ Magazine. 

"We  do  not  know  of  any  one  now  writing  who  gives 
evidence  of  a  better  critical  equipment  than  Mr.  More.  It 
is  rare  nowadays  to  find  a  writer  so  thoroughly  familiar  with 
both  ancient  and  modern  thought.  It  is  this  width  of  view, 
this  intimate  acquaintance  with  so  much  of  the  best  that  has 
been  thought  and  said  in  the  world,  irrespective  of  local 
prejudice,  that  constitute  Mr.  More's  strength  as  a  critic. 
He  has  been  able  to  form  for  himself  a  sound  literary  canon 
and  a  sane  philosophy  of  life  which  constitute  to  our  mind 
his  peculiar  merit  as  a  critic." — Independent. 

"  He  is  familiar  with  classical,  Oriental,  and  English 
literature ;  he  uses  a  temperate,  lucid,  weighty,  and  not 
ungraceful  style  ;  he  is  aware  of  his  best  predecessors,  and  is 
apparently  on  the  way  to  a  set  of  philosophic  principles 
which  should  lead  him  to  a  high  and  perhaps  influential 
place  in  criticism,  .  .  .  We  believe  that  we  are  in  the 
presence  of  a  critic  who  must  be  counted  among  the  first  who 
take  literature  and  life  for  their  theme." — London  Speaker, 


G.    P.    Putnam's   Sons 
New  York  London 


A  Sterling  Piece  of  Literary  Work 

THE   NOVELS  OF  HENRY  JAMES 

BY 

ELISABETH    LUTHER    GARY 

Author  of  "  The  Rossettis,"  "  William  Morris,"  etc. 

With  a  Bibliography  by  Frederick  A.  King 

Crown  octavo.     With  Portrait  in  Photogravure. 
Net,  $1.25    (By  mail,  $1.35) 

All  of  Miss  Gary's  work  in  biography  and  criti- 
cism is  marked  by  the  distinct  note  of  appre- 
ciation. In  such  a  spirit  she  brings  her  reader 
into  close  touch  with  the  mental  and  spiritual  traits 
of  each  author,  and  leaves  him  with  a  deeper  im- 
pression of  the  general  influences  of  the  subject 
chosen  for  study.  In  her  latest  volume,  a  critical 
interpretation  of  the  novels  of  Mr.  Henry  James, 
she  has  a  theme  well  suited  to  her  powers  of  in- 
sight and  illumination,  and  as  a  trained  writer,  a 
student  of  character  and  literature.  Miss  Gary  is 
well  equipped  for  her  congenial  task. 

The  intention  of  the  book  is  sufficiently  indi- 
cated by  its  title.  It  is  an  attempt  to  fix  more  or 
less  definitely  the  impression  given  by  the  work  of 
Mr.  James  taken  as  a  whole  accomplishment  and 
reviewed  with  reference  to  its  complete  effect.  It 
is  not  so  much  a  criticism  as  a  comment  upon 
the  author's  point  of  view  and  the  inferences  he 
draws  from  life.  An  exhaustive  bibliography  com- 
piled by  Frederick  A.  King,  arranged  logically  as 
well  as  chronologically,  completes  a  remarkably  in- 
teresting and  well  rounded  piece  of  contemporary 
criticism 

G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NEW   YORK  LONDON 


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